Gearing up...the REALITY

You know, no matter how much you gear up, there is just no preparation sufficient to watch your children go through surgery. There is nothing worse than watching your sweet child go limp prior to being wheeled away from you, knowing full well the pain they will be incurring. Christian's surgery was on Monday. As parents, I think Monday might have been one of the hardest days. Midway through the surgery we got a call in the surgical waiting room...on the RED phone...which rarely means good stuff. Gavin had just run down to the cafeteria to get some much needed lunch...so I answered the call. It was Christian's doctor calling to inform us that the cholesteotoma was back and worse than before. He went on to share that it would be "unsafe" to close up his ear in the same fashion he had done in the prior surgery. With such an aggressive form of this ear problem, he was going to have to do a more radical ear surgery than last time and certainly MUCH more than we had anticipated. Dr. Boston was as shocked as we were that it had come back and that it had now started to extend down his eustation tube and toward his brain. I absorbed the information and then my pregnancy hormones...or maybe its just a mom with crazy worry...kicked in and I bawled. I was trying to imagine the new ear, the dissappointment and the prolonged pain and recovery. Gavin and I both had our moments of...let's call them a humbling moment and a reality check of God's will.
I stayed at the hospital until we were able to get Christian comfortable. It took a while to get him out of the anesthesia funk and his pain under control. Then I had to leave to come back to Corpus to take care of Shane and things here. Gavin and Christian had to stay the night in the Pediatric ward for observation because of the increased depth of surgery. Shane and I drove back up to San Antonio once more yesterday morning to pick them up. And then we made a not-so-comfortable trip home with Christian. Its amazing how bumpy the roads become all of a sudden.
So...here we are...Christian is resting on the couch vegging to some shows. He is relatively fine as long as his pain is controlled. He is one of the sweetest little men I know. He takes this all in stride. And he just amazes me at his quiet strength. Gavin is back to work this afternoon...Booo!
We will be taking weekly trips to San Antonio for checks on the healing of all of the ear openings, skin grafts, etc that were done.
Ultimately, we feel really blessed...that the Dr. in SA has been so competent and so kind to us and to Christian. He really has gone above and beyond what he could and should do. Certainly compared to the awful ENT guy we had here in Corpus initially...Dr. Boston is heaven sent. We also feel blessed that we were encouraged to go in for this repeat surgery. Who knows what WOULD HAVE happened...but I believe that Christian was protected from further damage and possible bigger issues in finding this sooner than later. For these blessings, we are so grateful. To be honest, we did have frustrated expectations of what this surgery was going to be....but certainly we see the wisdom in what it needed to be.