Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Family bowling

I thought it would be fun for my birthday to go bowling with the kids. Yes, my birthday was almost two months ago but I haven't been blogging and I'm slowly trying to catch up on some of our fun family stuff. I actually got my best score that day. I'm not a good bowler so I was super excited about it. Anyways, it was a really fun activity and the kids had a blast. Here are some of the pictures.
They had these cool tracks for the kids to push their balls down the lane so they would go straighter.
Cameryn wanted to try it without the track but only tried it once.
Here's my cute hubby!!
Here is me with my super long hair.
Luke wanted to bowl with Mike's heavier ball and he actually did pretty good with it.
Luke jumping up and down after knocking down his pins.
Just a cute picture of Cameryn!

Our final scores and as you can see I won (yay!!) and Luke actually got second!!

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Surgery

Luke's surgery went really well on Thursday. The surgeon's office called me on Tuesday and told me that they were actually moving up his surgery from 9:30 to 8:30 which was great. The less time he has to wait and be hungry the better. Mike's mom, Robin came over Thursday morning at about 6:00 so she could watch Cameryn for us that day. I was so grateful for that too.

We were a little late getting to the hospital though.. early morning traffic and sprinkles of rain are never good. There was a really nice lady that happened to be walking through the front lobby area right as we rushed in and she worked in the Outpatient surgery area. She led us there, checked us in and rushed us back to her office so we could register. While I was answering all the questions, a nurse from the pediatric wing came and got Luke and Mike so they could get Luke's vitals and stuff. They were all so nice and helpful with getting us in and ready in time. When I was finally finished, I got to go back with Luke and wait. They had given him so many stickers and Luke was passing them out to me and Mike as well as putting them all over himself. He was so happy and pleasant that all the nurses kept complimenting us on how well behaved he was. I felt so awful though that soon he was going to have to be in pain.

His surgeons came back to take some measurements of his eyes and go over what exactly they would be doing in the OR. They ended up changing how they were going to fix his eyes. It's kind of involved so I'll try to be simple. His first surgery was to keep his eyes from crossing so they weakened the muscles on the insides of both his eyes. Then we found that his right eye would drift out occasionally and his left eye drifted a little but up (this was harder for me to see but I'm not a doctor, plus I see Luke everyday so I'm used to it and don't notice as much with the glasses). Since our eye muscle work together they usually would adjust the same muscle on each eye but because Luke's were so different it made it a more difficult situation. At first they were thinking of 1) only working on the left eye to correct the up/down muscle on that side and the outside muscle hoping that it would correct the right eyes problem or 2) doing both eyes the same. The first choice could have ended up with him having to eventually get another surgery on his right eye anyway and the second could have caused his eye to cross again and for the right eye to end up with the same up/down problem of the other eye. Thankfully we didn't go with either of those and they decided to fix the up/down muscle on the left eye only and the outside muscle on the right eye only. I felt really good about this decision and so did his surgeons. I'm really hopeful that this will be his last surgery.

Mike took Luke back to the OR since I did it last time and then we grabbed a quick breakfast in the cafeteria. The surgery ended up being only an hour which was great! We talked to the surgeons and then waited a little bit longer for them to call us back when Luke woke up. That was probably the most heartbreaking thing to go through. We walked back with a nurse to the Recovery room and Luke just looked so scared and in pain, it was awful. I walked over and put my stuff down and grabbed him from the nurse (gently of course). It was so hard to not break down in tears myself. Everything was hurting him and this time he was old enough to tell me. He wanted to pulse monitor off his toe, the gauze wrapped around his arm off, the IV out, his socks off, his eyes hurt, his belly hurt and he just wanted to go home. They asked if he was this upset last time but I told them I had still been nursing him way back then and the nurses let me nurse him and he just fell asleep.

The nurses were really nice and they took off the pulse monitor and they even took the gauze and IV out of his arm but then they said we really needed to get him to drink something. We tried to give him juice, popsicles, water, jello anything but he just wanted to go home. He finally did calm down for the most part but we had to keep stopping him from rubbing his eyes which he didn't like. He only wanted me to hold him (which I knew was going to happen because, well I'm his mom and when kids are hurt, they want their moms- Mike didn't quite get this) and I wasn't allowed to sit down, that just made him upset. Mike tried to relieve me but Luke got upset but I felt better myself being able to hold him. I had been so stressed all week and especially all that morning that I think I just needed to hold him too. Not that Mike wasn't feeling the same but he understood, he's a great dad and husband.

Mike finally got him to drink like 2 sips of water which wasn't enough but they said that he probably just needed to sleep of the rest of the anesthesia at home and then he would be better and would start drinking and eating. We got in the car and Luke was asleep within 10 minutes. I put him right into his bed when we got home around 12:00 and Mike and I took a nap too. We woke up at three and Luke was still sound asleep. We both were worried about him not drinking anything yet so we woke him up with us also to give him some more Tylenol. He was a little grumpy at first but once we gave him some juice and animal crackers, he got better. We sat with him on the couch and we all watched cartoons and he was actually happy. He still seemed a little bit out of it but he was happy and talking. Someone from church brought dinner over and Luke actually ate it. I was so happy he was eating and drinking.

Cameryn came home about 7:00 and was so sweet to her little brother. We gave them a quick bath and then Luke was in bed a little after 8:00. Cameryn, we found out from Robin, didn't wake up that morning until 10:30 so she definitely wasn't tired. She stayed up with me for a while and then we all finally went to bed.

Luke stayed asleep all night long and I ended up waking him up at 9:00. I am so proud of my little guy. He was so good and he is dealing with everything so well. He is one of the happiest boys I've ever met and I'm such a lucky mom to have him. We have to put this ointment in his eyes twice a day which he hates but he gets over it quickly and then he's happy again. Thanks for all of you who kept him in your prayers, it really helped all of us I'm sure. He had his post-op appointment yesterday which was fine but I'm bringing him back in 2 weeks for another followup. I just hope things keep looking good and that neither of us have to go through that again.