Pre-Operation Day!

Yep! Not 1 blog post today, but 2!  It's been a crazy, eventful week and I've had several people ask me for updates, so here you go!

Today was Jacob's pre-op day.  That means that we went into the Sacred Heart Children's Medical Center and did all of the paperwork, blood work, labs, X-Rays, and EKG's that he needed to be ready to go on Monday morning. Afterward, he had one more visit with the cardiologist to get his clean bill of health. 

I showed up at 9:00 a.m. with Jacob in hand, and proceeded to spend the next 5 hours with him doing the various different tasks and tests to prepare him for surgery. 

They did the standard weight and measuring, which showed that he had indeed begun to gain weight again now that his ND Tube was in the right spot.  Then they took us into a little room where they did 3 nose swab tests and went over paperwork with me.  Next, they had someone come in and do his EKG.  Normally, when they do the EKG it consists of maybe 4 cables taped to his chest.  This time they weren't messing around! He had 12 cables taped to various places on his chest.  But, because his chest is so tiny it was almost humorous to see this little boy with so many cables on his chest that you couldn't even see the chest anymore! All you could see were the testers and tape!

The nurse assigned to us was great.  She brought out a cute little (OK - not-so-little...it was almost as big as Jacob!!) teddy bear that had a medical bracelet on it's ankle just like Jacobs, EKG tabs on it's chests, and the nurse said they'd even be happy to add tubes to the teddy bear just like Jacob's will be when he's done with surgery.  She went on to explain that he'd have a tube out of his arm for the main arterial, a couple out of his stomach to help with drainage and air, one coming out of his mouth for the ventilator, and most likely one more for the pick line, or some such thing. 

We went over Jacob's Hyper Coagulation issues and I reminded her that the doctor had agreed to draw blood to test him for it either today or tomorrow before the surgery.  She noted that it wasn't in the orders for today, but did write it down to remind them to do the test tomorrow. 

When the ladies came in to do his labs, Jacob was true to form.  They wound up having to draw the blood from a couple of veins in his head.  They only needed 2 ml's of blood (probably less than 1/4 tsp) and it took a good 30-45 minutes to get it because they had to 'milk' his head and his blood kept clotting and wouldn't flow.  Again, the ladies were pro's and did a great job.  It was easy to tell that during the process he wasn't in any pain.  He was just mad that they were holding him down and not letting him swat at the lady who was rubbing his head! ;)

After the labs, we went over to radiology where he got a chest X-Ray.  However, this X-Ray was a little bit different than all the other's Jacob had in the past.  He needed to have the picture taken sitting up.  So, in order to get an unobstructed X-Ray, the technicians had this contraption that looked like a midget torture device!

It had a little seat that he straddled and sat on.  Then, they placed this clear plastic cylinder around his body with an opening for his face and placed his arms above his head.  Once around his body, they secured the cylinder which kept him upright and stabilized while they took the pictures.  Once again, Jacob was NOT happy.  Not in pain, but also NOT happy! Yes, there were lots of angry yells involved in this little test.  Luckily they only needed 2 pictures and he was in and out in just a couple of minutes. 



Soon afterward, they declared Jacob's tests complete for the day and reminded us to be back again at 5:30 a.m. on Monday morning.  The surgery will begin at aprox. 7:00 a.m. and his surgery is slated to last 285 minutes (4 1/2 hours).

We went back to the little room, got Jacob dressed, went up the the cardiologist who gave him a clean bill of health, and all the while, Jacob just glared at me and occasionally belted out a little yell in my direction with a bit of an unhappy snarl.  For some crazy reason, the day full of tests and pokes had put him in a bad mood and he wasn't going to let me forget it!

I couldn't help but giggle.  My sweet, mellow, little boy had finally grown an attitude and an opinion!  I guess he's got a little bit of fight in him after all!  Courtney! Watch out! You may have some competition in a few years.  Well.....OK, Courtney's still got him beat hands down, but he might give Nathan a run for his money! ;)