Surgery Update

Wednesday the 16th Ethan was scheduled for his surgery at noon, the night before it was pushed back to 1:45, once we got to the hospital and checked in, it was pushed back to 4:00pm, at that point, it was postponed until the next day. That made for a very long day of no eating for Ethan, but he did wonderfully. Thursday morning we got to the hospital bright and early for a 7:00am surgery. Wednesday evening, we were a little frustrated at the delay, but we know that it was all God's plan to have the surgeon to be fresh for Ethan's surgery. It took a full 6 hours. His cord had not only attached to the skin, but it was also starting to curl back upwards. The doctor said that it was the worse surgery that he'd ever seen. His original surgery for the spina bifida was when he was 8 months old in China, and it had not been reconstructed very well. Here in the states, the doctors will reconstruct the muscles and things over the vertebrae, that had not been done for Ethan. His cord was also tethered tighter than the doctor had anticipated, he had definitely been in quite a bit of pain. When he freed it from the skin, it pulled back 3 cm back toward the spinal column, and it was still tethered to other things. There was so much scar tissue that he had to scrape it off of his spinal cord. It also took a little longer for the doctor to reconstruct things and get it closed cleanly. Even with the swelling, it already looks so much better. Ethan was kept under some sedation in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit in order to help keep him laying flat for three days in order for the membrane that they used to cover the spinal column and keep it from leaking fluid to heal well. That was not fun for Ethan, mom and dad, or the nurses. Friday they tried to start weaning him off the sedation and they did it too quickly. He was thrashing around and trying to pull out all of the cords and tubes. After bringing him back to the highest level of sedation that they had him on and even adding something different on top of it, they finally got him calmed down. The next time they started weaning him off, we made sure they did it much slower. On Sunday he was allowed to start sitting up, once he figured out that there were buttons that made the head of the bed go up and down, mommy had to quickly figure out how to lock those buttons out. Monday was the day we first got out of bed. It started with trying to stand, then take a couple of steps. It took him a little while to get his sea legs back and to stand or take steps without us holding most of his weight and we were moved to a room on the regular peds floor instead of the pediatric ICU. On Tuesday morning, he was walking all by himself!!!! By noon on Tuesday we were home!