So, my surgery date was November 3rd and everything was going great, Jon had been super-duper sick but had gotten all better (he is scheduled to have his tonsils and adenoids removed next week). After trick-or-treating on Halloween he did have a mild asthma attack (minus 25 cool points to me for forgetting his inhaler), but he got through it. Then Wednesday, the day before my surgery the school called and says “he’s coughing so much that he’s gagging and throwing up.” Awesome! I picked him up and his health quickly plummeted. His fever spiked up to 100.7, not bad but not great and his wheezing was HORRENDOUS!!!! I was giving him breathing treatments as much as medically advisable. 8:00 p.m. rolled around and I loaded up the girls to go spend the night at Ms. Stacey’s, who would then take them to school in the morning (a huge “thank you” to her) without my boy in tow. We hoped and prayed Jon would magically be healed and we could run him over to her house before I went to check in at the hospital at 6 the next morning. That didn’t happen.
We showered and got ready for bed, he climbing into bed with Corey since we had already made up Jon’s room for me as “Mom’s Recovery Room” and I climbed into Jon’s bed, but I just lay there and listened to him coughing more and more, the wheezing became more and more evident. It wasn’t long before Corey poked his head in the door and said “We need to head to the ER”. I jumped out of bed and said “My thoughts exactly!”
Wesley Medical is a great hospital here in Hattiesburg. We love them. They are thoughtful and observant and, well, private. They took Jon immediately to a “cardiac room” and Corey and I knew we were in for a doozie of a night. His oxygen sats were hovering around 90%, they would give him a treatment, the sats would zoom up to 98 maybe even 99 but within three minutes of the treatments ending his sats would be right back down to 90%.
His x-rays showed haziness but no pneumonia. Good but not-so-good. The ER Doc said we had moved from “seasonal asthma” to “full-blown-asthma” and that we needed to see a specialist. After several more breathing treatments and some steroids we were released ….. it was almost 3:30 a.m. We went home and slept for one hour, and then we got up and headed back to Wesley Medical for my surgery.
At 6:00 a.m. I checked in for my surgery and was promptly taken back to prep, with my husband and son in tow. They sat in Pre-Op with me as I got into my gown, got my IV started, got counseled by anesthesiologists, chatted with my doctor who would perform my surgery (telling him about our adventurous night), and at 7:30 I was rolled back for surgery. During the 2 hours that I was under they went to the little coffee shop and tried to stay awake. At 9:30 their smiling faces were the first thing I saw before demanding drugs, then my doctor came in, I asked how long I would be in recovery and he said “until 2:30”. I told my husband to take Jon home and sleep, they did not resist.
At exactly 2:30 p.m. his head popped back in the curtains of post-op, and following him were my nurses who took me to the third floor to my private room, where I was situated and informed I was on a liquid diet. Awesome. I sent Corey downstairs to Starbucks for a mocha, God love the man - he immediately went and got me one.
At 3:30 p.m. Corey and Jon left to pick up the girls, promising to come back in a bit with the touchpad so I’d have something to do that night just in case I got bored. Only, sometimes plans don’t work out the way we want them to. Corey was just too tired. It’s okay, I told him, I’ll be fine.
I told the kids how much I loved them and promised to see them the next day when they got home from school. They were crying. I had never not been there. They may have gone and spent the night somewhere else, but “mom” had never been absent from the home except to give birth to the kiddos. So it was hard on them, for that I am sorry.
I slept off and on. Checked FaceBook. Went to the bathroom a lot (the doc ok’ed my catheter to be removed around 5:00 that day, so WOOHOO!). My nurse was super great. She came in and checked on me and finally came in and just sat and we had a great conversation. That was nice.
My doctor was back by 7:30 the next morning and declared me fit to go home, so by the time Corey got there after 8:00 I was ready, all I had to do was eat some breakfast and change clothes. That was easy. What wasn’t so easy? THE WALK TO THE CAR!!!! I thought it’d be like when I had my babies and they rolled me to the front door in a wheelchair and my husband would pull up to the front door and help me into the vehicle. Yea, not so much. The nurse comes in and says “I’ll walk with you to your car.”
Yea, but we’re on the third floor and he parked in the parking garage. Crap.
But I did it!
We got home and I got situated in my recovery room. Jon got to go on the field trip to the Petrified Forest (along with Hannah).
I huge THANK YOU goes out to Susan for bringing us dinner. If you live in the Hattiesburg area please check out What’s For Supper. It’s delicious food. Seriously.
And I’m on the mend. No news on any lab results. Jon has his surgery on Wednesday and I get my stitches out on Thursday. Keep your fingers crossed for us! Thanks for sending good thoughts our way!
