Surgery Update

So here's what happened...Jack coughed all night long. In addition he woke up screaming at 2 am. I immediately picked him up and his little body was shaking. He calmed down for a minute or two but then started this involuntary jerking and screaming. We weren't sure if it was pain or a seizure or what. It happened a few more times and then he fell asleep.

When we got to the hospital this morning there were green rivers of snot running down his face. No matter how often we wiped the rivers kept flowing. When we got up to the reception desk on the surgery floor the nurses took one look at him and went to get the anesthesiologist. He came in and said he was uncomfortable doing the surgery in his condition but he wanted to speak with the surgeon before they sent us home. The surgeon wanted to see Jack before we left but he was in surgery so we were going to have to wait an hour. They had a blues clues movie on for Jack so we said OK. He came in about 40 minutes later and agreed with the anesthesiologist and declared the surgery cancelled. He wanted to talk to our pediatrician to change his antibiotic. So while he was off doing that the nurse gave us some pedialyte to give to Jack so we did a bolus. About 30 min. later the anesthesiologist (I haven't mentioned that he didn't speak english andwe couldn't understand a word he said) came in and told us that they were still going to do surgery but a different one. He wasn't able to give us any details he just wanted us to give consent. We of course refused. We weren't going to give consent to an unknown surgery when a few hours earlier he was very uncomfortable giving him anesthesia. We wanted to find out what the procedure was. I went out and paged our pediatrician directly because I wanted to know what they talked about. Our pediatrician wanted him to have an ear fluid culture which needed to be done under anesthesia. He believes that even though the infection is in his sinuses the bacteria would show up in the ear fluid. When we finally talked to the ENT he said that if they were going to put him under and make a hole in his ear drum to collect the fluid they might as well slip a tube in there. We started to talk about his secretion issue and I wanted to know what hadchanged in the last few hours to make them think Jack would be fine. A few hours before they were adamant that it was not safe to put him under. Why the change? Our ENT said "I'm going to step out of my doctor role for a second. Do you want my personal opinion?" Of course, I said yes. I completely trust him. He said "If this were my child and I was in your shoes I would not do the procedure". That was enough for me. He said that right now we are managing Jack's secretions at home and it was clearly not affecting his lungs. The ENT said that if we did the procedure today we would have a 20% chance that his respiratory status would be compromised. 20% is a lot! So we packed up Jack and brought him home.

I hate having that feeling of knowing that you have to make a decision and neither option is a good one. Luckily in this situation we had the option to walk away. I know Lesley was just talking about this with Ameile's trach. It is so incredibly stressful. Before we talked to the ENT for the last time the anesthesiologist was sort of pressuring a decision. Philip and I got into this huge fight right there in the room because I took something he said the wrong way. When you have such an intense stress you snap easily. We kissed and made up. :-)

One thing that did really bother me today was that the very first time the ENT came to see us he said his patient was still asleep on the table. The same thing happened with Jack's last surgery. The surgeon came out of the OR to discharge us when we had become friends with the little boy who he was supposed to be operating on. We saw them take him to the OR and at that time he should have been in the middle of the procedure. I can't believe a doctor can leave the OR like that! I know there are other people there but I never want to theink about the surgeon leaving Jack on that table. I think back to all his other surgeries and wonder how many times the surgeon left him. It is so hard to think about!Anyway, Jack is now home and doing great. They are going to try to reschedule the surgery to be in 2 weeks. We'll see what happens.