T'was the Night Before Surgery...

T minus 12 hours and counting (at least it was when I opened this window and started this post)...

We have our surgery time booked for 8:40am tomorrow.  It will be somewhat of a relief to be on the other side of the surgery for a change.  I'm certainly looking forward to moving forward.  We are set to go with the Ladd's Proceedure, Fundoplication, G-Tube feeding tube, Appendectomy (part of the Ladd's) and possibly repair to his Umbilical Hernia (which actually seems to be healing on it's own).

Mr.B's had a rough couple of days being 'prepped' for tomorrow he screamed his head off through an abdominal ultrasound and didn't fair any better with his blood work today.  Poor Grandma Jean had to see the not-so-happy side of B and it was a strain for her to see him so upset.  It is hard enough for me to endure and I see it often so I can only imagine how it would be very difficult for her. 

I'm not honestly sure what set him off for the ultrasound as he was doing well before we set off for it but as soon as we left his room to go down he cried like he was going to the torture chamber.  The ultrasound tech was more than a little 'put out' that I didn't want her to scan her till he had a chance to calm down.  I got to pick him up to which he calmed right down so we tried again by putting him down and off he went again.  I got the tech to let me hold him while she scanned his back and got some shots of his kidneys. Even with that we still had to stop a few times and give him a minute to calm down.  How do you explain the fragility of a child to a tech when she's got a job to do?  Oh well, she had to suck it up!  We didn't get the tummy done but we did get to see enough of the kidneys to get shots of the cysts to monitor them and to see that there is no further swelling present. 

Mr.B was rightly pissed at his blood work today, they took three pokes for the first round, found out one of them didn't take (it clotted too quickly) so they came back.  Round two, two pokes in and they decided to just 'milk' his heel.  Now for those of you that have never had to suffer through watching this done to your child then I will just say they prick the heel and just squeeze it repeatedly forcing it to bleed droplets for them to collect.  If they are doing it simply to collect blood for say a blood gas it is usually not that big of a deal and the nurses are fast but when you've been poked FIVE times with little success, enduring the squeeze of the rubber tubing each time it gets to be much.  She also needed to collect what seemed like a lot for a heel poke as well!  SIGH.  Sorry to my nurse friends reading this, but it was awful to watch and they are lab techs, aren't they supposed to be good at pokes???

The flip side was that the tech came in to do his Echo Cardiogram shortly after the heel milking and I had him very calm and almost asleep.  He gave a half hearted fight but was too exhausted and settled into sleep so I am assuming she got some good pictures.  I didn't hear anything from Cardio so I guess that means we are good to go for tomorrow.

The gross and disturbing part of the last two days have been my 'classes' on the maintenance and use of his new G-tube feeding tube.  I know I'll get used to it, I know it won't be that bad but man, it is not pretty.  It is just yet another learning curve to follow and one that will give him a better quality of life so I'll just have to suck it up.  I love that the two training nurses keep going on about how you can compare it to getting an earring (in terms of the cleaning and maintenance), maybe I'll need to add some bling to it?

Our little Squeak is a fighter and a damn good one at that so I'm not too concerned at his ability to handle the surgery.  My fear lies more with what Dr. Brindle may find once she is in there. 

I will try to write a short post tomorrow when he is out of surgery but I can't guarantee too much!

Thank you to everyone in advance for all of the love, support and positive thoughts that we've got coming our way, (my phones been a-buzzing tonight)!