Noah's Surgery

We are home after a very, very long day of surgery. It was, as expected, a very emotional day for everyone. Thankfully, we had a lot of distractions with Booboo, Grandma and Uncle Mark in attendance. Noah wasn't supposed to eat after midnight and the surgery was scheduled at 11am so we had to keep him busy and off of his usual routine so as to not miss his normal bountiful breakfast. Thankfully he slept in later than usual so we let him play in his room until we were ready to leave. He got to the hospital and was entertained by all the attention, some new books and a few random hospital toys and more books. He also just liked walking up and down the corridor.


We checked in at 10am and waited until it was time to go in and get changed into his hospital pajamas. As expected he hated going into the little examining room and lost it when they tried to take his blood pressure. Even all the playing with his doctor kit at home didn't ease the discomfort he feels when anything is restraining any part of his body. He cried. He screamed. I cried. I wanted to scream. After he got into his pajamas it was supposed to be a short wait, but the hospital was running late. We didn't get called back for surgery until after 11:30. As the time went on Noah got more and more hunger dazed and confused, but he kept playing. He did amazingly well.

The original plan was to give him some flavored medicine to knock him out before putting him under because I knew he would not like having the mask put on his face. I guess when the hospital started running late that plan got scratched because the next thing I know we were called into a small dark room with three other people and we watched as they put a mask on our screaming tortured baby. We held on to him as they counted to three and then suddenly he was out. It was the most gut wrenching experience. I immediately lost it.

After that, we left the room. I was still confused about what I had just witnessed--what happened to the flavored little pills? My only solace was that it was very quick. We were then moved to a different, quieter, more sterile waiting room--the same place we had been to on our pre-op visit.

The surgery took about 30 minutes longer than we were expecting (45 minutes to an hour and a half was the original estimate) and we started to get very antsy. Booboo went to check for us since we seemed incapable of actually communicating with anyone else. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Hui came out and told us something we were not at all prepared to hear. It turns out Noah does not have a second testicle. And, once they got in there and discovered this fact they had to be sure that what they had really seen on the ultrasound was a lymph node--which took a lot longer because they have to be sure. So, the procedure turned out to be an exploratory one, and apparently a necesssary one because they cannot leave a dead testicle in there. It is extremely odd that he was checked out in the hospital after birth and seemingly had a testicle, but now does not. Either someone at the hospital made a mistake or he lost one after birth--which is extremely rare and scary. I suppose we will never know.

He has a belly button incision and one on either side of his belly button and a fourth larger one in the lower abdomen. He had an injection that kind of numbed him from the waist down so he isn't allowed to walk around the rest of the night. He did well this afternoon--mostly just laid around all floppy on one of us. He had a small bout of nausea that caused some mild vomiting, but otherwise he's fine. We're giving him lots of love and cuddles and we're just thankful it is now a thing of the past.