Lucky Number 13...

Waiting for surgery.

Thankfully, although his surgery was cancelled in November, Ethan was able to get a time on December 4th.  When we went in to surgery, his hydrocele was not really noticeable but the surgeon decided to proceed anyway.  Surgery went well and in recovery she told us she was happy she chose to proceed with surgery and that it wasn't acting up as the anatomy of the hydrocele was different.  During his time in recovery, Ethan had a dip in his oxygen saturation numbers and was not able to keep a steady pattern they were happy with so he got admitted for the night.  For the first time they put us in a semi-private room.  When Ethan was a month old, they moved him from a ward room to a private one as he had the EVDs and chemotherapy.  We were quite nervous about what he might pick up as the floor was full and most of the doors seemed to have the precaution signs on them indicating there is a lot of germs going around!  We saw several nurses we got to know in our 2010-2011 stays and everyone was amazed at how much he's grown since they last saw him.

Ethan behaved during the night (although because they ordered the monitor on him and he tends to breathe shallow his alarm rang off a lot as apnic), and was able to come home Wednesday morning.  :)  Although the site is swollen, he was in pretty good spirits.  We are continuing to give him Tempra to ease the pain as you can see he is quite sensitive too.  Because of the location of his incision, we are not putting him in pants much and are not to use the back brace for 4-5 days so it can heal.  Last night and today Ethan had a rough go of it not sleeping, coughing lots, throwing up and generally in pain.  Hopefully he has a good night tonight!

I believe I've mentioned it before but at our local hospital, you can take part in a program that allows you to enter the OR while they anaesthetise your child for surgery.  I have been going in with Ethan since we started his serial casting.  In order to go into the OR, you need to put on scrubs, shoe covers, mask and hair net.  Clayton usually mocks me when I'm all dressed up and this time he grabbed a couple pictures (as you can see, I successfully blocked one of them).