surgery day

Today was the day for Nathaniel's bladder surgery. It seems that in the time that he was away from me he did not get cathed properly or often enough, or a combination of the two, so he developed bladder stones. The only way to get rid of these painful, infection causing stones was to surgically remove them. All of this frustrated me to NO END, after all I have spent Nathaniel's whole life working hard to keep him healthy, but I can't dwell on the negative of how we got here, I can only focus on getting him healthy and happy again!

It was a long haul to UCSF today. I worked last night at my night job, then we left afterwards. I only made it half way up before I was falling asleep, so we stoped and napped at a Motel 6 for like four hours. It wasn't perfect, but it helped. We were back on the road by 7 this morning and checking in at UCSF at 930. Both Nat and I were really tired, as you can tell by this oh so fabulous picture of us...

Nat did well in the pre op room, and only cried a little. He is getting better at not obsessing so much. I am not so sure he has improved in his sleepy time manners though... he did not vomit on anyone today at the hospital (that is a first!), but he did punch the anesthesiologist as she was putting his mask on him. Oy Vey. The actual surgery was rather quick. They were able to completely blast all of his stones, and clean up a bunch of debris that was in his bladder. The Dr came down to tell me that he did great, he is really clean inside and we don't have to come back next week like was originally planned! (Praise the Lord, because it's not cheap to keep travelling up to UCSF!) I got to go into the recovery room right away due to his earlier violence. He was a sweet sleeping angel when I got in there.

And he actually woke up well today too. Nathaniel often wakes up from surgery in a violent, sick manner but today we had no more violence and no vomiting at the hospital. And few tantrums (one of the hardest part of anesthesia is that he can't have his behavior meds :( ) After just and hour and a half he was released. We headed home.

He was very sleepy still when we headed home, but woke up pretty quickly. Unfortunately the stress of the day and the lack of sleep caught up with me almost as quickly. We didn't make it far when I was once again falling asleep at the wheel, so we stopped at one of our favorite hotels. I was ready to splurge on comfort this time!s And I am really glad that I did. Not only was the room really nice and the bed super comfortable (I am weird about beds...) but the service was OUTSTANDING!!! I needed a room that we could get to with the wheelchair because Nathaniel still was weak and he had a Foley cath in with a bag. I also needed two queens, not one king. The wonderful manager switched another person out of this room to put us in here. Then when Nat started having trouble and I called down for a shower bench not only did she bring a shower bench for us, but also some Sprite for Nat and she came back in a cleaned up the room while we headed out to find a pharmacy. It is so nice to get great service and with a concerned smile too. She is definitely getting a thank you note when I get home :) And by the way.... in case you were wondering... peanut butter pretzels taste yummy, and are a relatively healthy snack for the boy while he watches TV and mommy sleeps, but they are NOT fun when they come back up!! GROSS texture, color and clean up!

This is what an expensive hotel bed looks like, and man was it worth it this night! And Nat loved the brand new (just installed today) flat screen TV. Sometimes a girl just has to pull out the credit card for comfort and trust that the Lord will provide a way to pay the bill!

I love that there was even the perfect place to hang his Foley bag right by the bed! How nice of them was that :)

So we are resting up and regaining our energy. We will head he rest of the way home in the morning. It was not a perfect day, there was a great deal of strife between my mother and I, and I am exhausted, but in the end what really maters is that Nathaniel is on his way to healthy again, and for that I am so thankful for! Praise the lord for bringing us through this step!