It's Been A Rough Week

Friday morning Aiden had eye muscle surgery to correct a lazy eye and bring both of his eyes to a straight position. The surgery itself was about an hour long, and then we were brought back into recovery to help him while he was waking up from anesthesia. I don't know how many of you have had surgery, but when you wake up from anesthesia you're really loopy and you can't really make sense of everything around you. When a baby or toddler wakes up from anesthesia it scares them because they have never really felt like that before which causes them to become almost inconsolable until they calm down.

Usually it takes the little ones about 20-30 minutes to get the fit out of their system and then they drink a little bit of liquids and the surgery center sends you on home. Well after almost an hour straight of screaming, crying, thrashing his body around, and not being able to wake up or really respond the nurses decided to try to call his doctor. Dr. Johnson was already back in the OR on another patient so they decided to give Aiden some oral medicine to help calm him down. He had been refusing to drink any liquids so they had to force it down, and not even 3 minutes later he was throwing up everywhere. My poor baby. Must of the medicine must have made it into his system though because about another 20-30 minutes later he finally started to respond to us. He could barely open his eyes {which is understandable since the poor boy just had his muscles detached and reattached under his lower lids} but he was able to keep down about half a cup of juice. They kept us another 30 minutes to monitor him and make sure the worst was over and then we changed him into his favorite Thomas the Train pajamas, made him as comfortable as we could in his car seat, and were on our way.

I was pretty nervous about leaving right away because of the way he had responded after his surgery. He had another minor eye surgery when he was 16 months old and it had been the "normal" experience so I was little worried to drive 2 1/2 hours back home if something went wrong. So we hung around Wilmington for a while, driving around, and cruising the mall {during this whole time Aiden was completely knocked out} before coming home. When we got home he woke up after an almost 6 hour nap, really cranky and asking to talk to his grandmas {which is what he does when he doesn't feel good}. He stayed awake for a whopping three hours before falling back asleep for another 11 hours.

When he woke up Saturday morning is was like nothing happened. He was fine. The only thing that was different was that he didn't like the sun in his eyes. Later Saturday afternoon we came home from running a few errands, and Monster started complaining about his eyes hurting and he was literally crying and begging for his eye medicine. The doctor had told us a number of times that at his age he wouldn't feel any pain after surgery so we found it a bit strange that he was telling us that his eyes hurt and that he was specifically asking for medicine. We called the on-call doc, which turned out to be Aiden's doctor, and let him know what was going on. He said just to monitor Aiden and if things didn't change then to call him the next day and we'd go from there.

I have to say that it is one of the most heartbreaking things to see your child go through something like this and you be powerless to help him. I mean he needed the surgery. It was inevitable. But to look into his bloody and blistered eyes...it hurt. There are just some boo-boos you can't fix with a hug and a kiss.

On Monday Aiden got a stomach bug. His first one in fact. I mean it was pretty bad. Kept us up all night. Thank God it seemed to be a 24 hour thing that was over as quickly as it began.

Then on Tuesday I got the bug. I don't know if it was worse because I'm older, or if it just effected me differently, but it was horrible. If my baby was in as much agony as I was, I feel even worse for him. Mine last longer as well. All day Wednesday I literally couldn't move off the couch. It freaking sucked.

Today everything is better. Aiden's eyes are healing. He had his post-op appointment today and while I couldn't go{because I still felt a little queasy this morning}, Ethan said it went really well. His eyes are straightened. His vision is really good. The doctor is really happy with the outcome. Now the boys are on the way home and I feel fine. The worst is over and now it's time for all of us to get back to normal.

I'm just counting on this weekend being much better. It has to be right? And now I leave you with one of the bravest little boys I know:



4 days post-op...honestly they look way better than they did