Thursday, October 4, 2007

Day 36: Surgery Tomorrow

This week before surgery has flown by and the moment is almost upon us.

Monday evening we got to spend with Charity and her family again, we had a great time! Somehow her house is in a time warp, as in time here at the hospital slowly crawls by and when we are having fun getting to visit and John is getting to play with the kids the time just flies by. We look forward to getting to visit again when John is feeling up to it.

Mark came in on Tuesday and since then we have been running and playing and chasing John up and down the hallways letting him enjoy every moment of freedom he could get before surgery. Today we took him to the zoo, this time we let him take his gait trainer into the aquarium and he loved it, he was pointing at the sharks over his head and following them up and down the tunnel, it was as cool to watch him as it was to watch the fish. He rode through the rest of the zoo in his gait trainer and was amazed that giraffes were really that big, tigers are huge and that elephant is sleeping!

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We check in for surgery at 9:30 am tomorrow, surgery itself isn't scheduled until 11am and they tell us that it could be as short as 3 or 4 hours and as long as 6 depending on what they find in there. Along with the STEP procedure they will be doing a liver biopsy, just to check and make sure everything is okay, and will also be removing his gallbladder as most short-gut kids have to have that done eventually anyway. The surgeons name is Dr. Sudan and she is certainly the tool through which God works many miracles for these little guys. The plan at this time is for John to go straight to the peds floor after surgery, so one of us will be able to be with him constantly.

Thank you again for your prayers, we are excited about this and scared all at the very same instant and find our only peace in placing John in the merciful hands of Christ and knowing that God's will for him is perfect. I will post an update tomorrow evening and let you know how he's doing.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

praying for my beloved godson & those who are taking care of him!!
~angie

Elephantschild said...

I just had to chuckle at the photo - when my Dd was a baby Everybody (and They) kept saying how dangerous "walkers" were. Now, I know John's gait trainer is more complicated, expensive and is better designed than the "Evil Walker" that my Dd LOVED when she was the same age as your John, but STILL! I'm finding it very, very, funny. :)

Praying for you all. Hope you can find good distractions to get you through the long hours tomorrow till your Little Man is out of surgery!

Gina said...

Thanks for your prayers!

You know we were out wandering the hospital the other day and go caught up in traffic and a couple ladies were behind us talking about how dangerous his walker is and how they now make ones that are safer. I almost turned around to talk to them but figured there was no use in it and besides John was ready to run!

John's gait trainer is much more sturdy than a baby walker and much more dangerous imo, to himself and those around him. He ran down our basement stairs and because he was unhurt then thought that he could run down any set of stairs he came to. Fortunately we've been able to convince him otherwise, there are some HUGE sets of stairs here, but if he wasn't able to be convinced it would be scary. The bottom bar on this thing is metal and has left more than one dent in a column, my leg and is currently a battering ram that the child thinks he can use against anything that looks like it might be forced to move. Somebody stopped him in the hall a couple weeks ago and told him that he needed a motor, I didn't tell them, but that would be my worst nightmare at the moment, at least without a motor I can catch him :)