Saturday, May 9, 2009

Over and Done!

After about a 2 month delay Sam finally had his ear tubes replaced, his adenoids removed and his strabismus corrected. Of course this was not without some sort of drama as minor as it may have been...

Sam's surgery was scheduled at NY Eye and Ear. They have a beautiful pediatric out patient surgical facility that was for the most part very organized, clean, comfortable, and the nurses and nursing aids were just amazing. So we get there at 6:15 am to check in for Sam's procedures that should have been for 7:30am. Now during the preliminary pre-op stuff that comes along with any procedure weeks before the actual D-day I specifically asked if I needed to talk to the anesthesiologists prior to coming in for the procedure. I was told no and that all Sam needed was clearance from his pulmonologist and we were ready to go.

So about 20 minutes before Sam had to go down for surgery the anesthesiologist came in to talk to me and as I giving Sam's history I could see his face starting to turn from a friendly pre-op consult type of smile to a holy shit lady there is no way in hell I am intubating your kid. By this point in the day Sam had already been hysterical as the boy knew the second we walked into the hospital this was not going to be a good day for him. Sam was scared to death and crying non-stop since we got there. So of course this leads to him sound even juicier than normal and when the anesthesiologist listened to him he was obviously really alarmed. I told the doctor that Sam is really fine and has never had a problem being extubated. If anything he may need a nebulizer treatment but other than that he can hold his own on room air pretty quickly after they pull the tubes out. Anyway the doctor was still really uncomfortable which made Sam's ENT really uncomfortable... PS they wanted to post-pone the surgery to do it at NYU instead of NY Eye and Ear. Of course Scott immediately lost his shit and his first words were "Who do I have to harass at NYU to get this done today?" By this time the opthomologist had left to get changed and go back to his office up town and a few minutes later the chief of anesthesia came in looked at Sam spoke to me for 2 seconds and said this was not going to be a problem at all let's continue. SO of course Scott goes flying out of the room to get the opthamologist (it literally took 2 months to coordinate this surgery and I do not have another 2 months to get this done).

In the end everything worked out great. The entire procedure with both doctors took a total of 45 minutes from start to finish. Sam did not need nebulizer treatments after.. YAY! He was pretty uncomfortable for the rest of the day but this morning he woke up perfect... smiling, happy, playful, etc... I could not be more grateful that all is well and Sam is doing FANTASTIC!!! His eye looks kind of red but its not as bad as I thought it would be and he is breathing so much better because of the adenoids and he is responding so much better to speech because his ears are perfectly clear!!!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am an SLP that follows your blog. I am SOOO glad that the procedure went well. May Sam continue to progress...and may your new baby make your already beautiful family complete!

Lainie said...

Yay Sam!!!!

Anonymous said...

Great news.
I guess without a drama nothing really can't happen.
Hope to hear more progress soon.
Love to all
Irit IS

Anonymous said...

Amen to a happy ending!
And luckily Sam has the two most amazing advocates in his corner!

Alise

Anonymous said...

yes sam- you can-
love ya
aumt maddy