TJ's surgery

All went well for us at TJ's surgery yesterday. The pic above was him BEFORE surgery. We were watching cartoons on PBS. When we got to the hospital, he walked and ran and was bouncing around like normal. We checked in and he refused the arm band. So they let us wait on that. Got put in a holding room for a little bit, then situated into a private room with a door and the TV, so he was happy. It was completely kid friendly room....little table and chairs with crayons and coloring books, a glider rocker and the bed. We managed to talk TJ into hospital jammies and the arm band (on his ankle) by telling him that they had to have it on so they knew which boy to bring popsicles to.

After he was out of surgery the doc called me into a consultation room to tell me about the surgery and then I was sent back to the family waiting room to wait for him to come out of recovery. Time seemed to go quickly and before I knew it, I was being paged to go back to his room in the surgery center to recover. A nurse was riding the bed with him snuggled up as they came in, but as soon as he saw me, he wanted out of that bed! We tried giving him juice and a popsicle, but he wasn't ready. I sat there with him for about a half hour with him being crabby and fussy and dozing on and off before the nurse said, "Oh, he hasn't had any pain medicine yet." (This is AT LEAST an hour after his surgery was complete.) So, we tried to give him some, but he didn't take it all. Whatever he did get into him must've been enough because he fell asleep for about an hour or so and when he woke up he drank the popsicle and the juice, asked for more juice which he promptly guzzled and we were out the door shortly after that.

When we picked up the other three boys from Brandon's house, Jaimie and Victoria couldn't believe that he'd had surgery that day...he was his normal, playful self!

Last night, he had pain meds at 8, went to bed and slept until 1:30 when he wanted more pain meds and fell back asleep until my mom called and woke us up at 7:30. He didn't want to have the pain meds from the hospital (they smell bad, I'm sure they taste bad, too!) so I managed to get him to take some regular Tylenol and he's been awesome ever since. We rode bikes (TJ and Tuck in the bike trailer) over to the Cross Country trail (again) and explored the woods for a while, came home and had popsicles and juice and now he's watching a movie. If I can keep him kinda mellow with movies and popsicles today, I'll be doing good!

(Head over to JessBosmanPhotography to see pix from our adventures in the woods today!)