Nine years ago yesterday, we found out Jacob would need his leg surgically reconstructed due to a benign bone cyst. About a month later, a plate and four screws went in. Today, they came out.
This wasn't really an easy decision and it took more than a couple medical opinions to get here, but in the end it wasn't as tough of a call as you might expect. He's been in pain so long and tried so many things, and this was really the next logical thing to try. Hopefully it'll be the last, but truly there's no guarantee.
We wavered a bit on timing as we thought through this, but over the past week or so it became pretty clear that this was the best move for everyone (except maybe his team). But even the mom of the only other good player on the team was super understanding. I somehow never met her last year but as we both got increasingly frustrated during the last game, we ended up chatting in our mutual misery. The team is just awful, honestly. Besides Jacob and Joe, there is almost zero offense, little defense, and a complete lack of confident ballhandling. It's hard to watch. They may not win a game, and Joe's mom admitted it wasn't worth playing out the season for that, even though Joe could use the help, just because the next year-plus is so important for him recruitment-wise. She also said they'd be praying for him, which I really appreciated. But it's hard knowing Joe's senior season will be so rough. It'll be interesting to see if the players can get themselves together at all. We know the talent isn't really there, but there's been some degree of annoyance because of how much Joe and Jacob were getting the ball--and their shooting hasn't been that great, which hasn't helped (though we're convinced the home rims are way too bouncy since they played so much better in another gym)--so now that everyone should have a fair shot, we'll see if they can prove anything.
Jacob has been so eager for the surgery. We're eager for him to get relief, but obviously as a parent there are always nerves. We didn't want to transfer them to him, but at the same time, his overconfidence was a bit unnerving--I didn't want him to go into this feeling invincible and then blame us later if something didn't go as smoothly as planned. Of course, my anxiety went through the roof leading up to it. The good news is that he's been through anesthesia a number of times already so that was less of a concern. But there's always that nagging feeling that something unexpected could happen--whether it's infection or some sort of other complication. I won't even go into the depths of what my anxiety was doing the night before, but it was pretty rough. I had to distract myself with as much Christmas shopping as I could muster just to get through the night. We all went to bed early-ish, at least. But that 4:30 wake-up was a bit rough.
It's now 9:30 as I type this, and he's still in the OR. We never really asked how long they thought it would take, and of course, since he's been in their possession since 8am, we're admittedly feeling a little nervous. A bunch of kids (in the form of ID numbers) just switched over to the recovery room side of the status board, and he wasn't one of them. It's probably fine, but this stuff never seems to get easier. The concern is mostly that the bone grew over his plate, or maybe they found something funky while they were in there (though it would be nice if they could identify what was happening in there), because that would involve extra recovery and probably quite a bit more pain. He doesn't do well with the heavy-duty painkillers, so that would be less than ideal. The longer it goes, obviously the more nervous we get. It seems pretty straightforward, but what do we know? It IS surgery, after all. Last time he was inpatient overnight, and while we were at the hospital again for this one, this time is supposed to be a pretty quick discharge.
Being at the hospital is sort of odd for me. As an employee of the university that runs this hospital, working with colleagues who fundraise for this hospital every day, it's oddly fun to see it all in motion. I see familiar donor names on the walls and see the tangible benefit of the funds our team and other teams raise. But being in a hospital is also super sobering, especially a children's hospital. You see kids with problems--obvious physical and cognitive differences, wheelchairs, etc. You hear the surgeon come out to talk to other parents about things like heart function. You see the "consultation rooms" next to the bathroom that are probably where they take you when there's bad news, so no one sees you cry. You hear alarms from time to time and wonder what they mean. It's all a vivid reminder that this hospital is very much needed for very real problems. Ours is probably pretty minimal compared to some, but it's still a lot.
As far as the first part of the day went, I was up at 4:30 and Craig and Jacob were up at 5. We had an elaborate setup for Carter to get to school on his own, as I really did want to be here before surgery. Carter is capable, so we just set a bunch of wakeup alarms and prompt alarms to make sure he was on target to catch his bus. I called him through Messenger a couple times, and by all accounts he did okay. If we get home and the lights are off and the door was locked, we'll make that official. That was a tough call to make, to leave him alone for that process, but he can be a pretty responsible kid and I felt like it was pretty important to be with Jacob for this one day. (Later edit: He indeed did fine.)
Check-in was pretty simple, aside from him taking forever to get into his gown (he had to wipe himself down and he was probably nervous because the curtain wasn't covering all the windows as much as he would have liked). He also had a slight hiccup with his IV--it was fine initially and then she figures he held his breath and the vein collapsed, which hurt pretty bad. Otherwise, the rest of the prep seemed to go pretty smoothly, and suddenly he was off. I grabbed an iced coffee for myself and a sparkling water for Craig from the lobby after that, and now we've just been sitting and waiting. It's not fun. The Paw Patrol marathon on TV is starting to get on my nerves. We did find out there's a new girl dog. Hard to believe it's probably been about six years or more since we watched it regularly. Time sure flies.
Jacob's status finally switched to recovery around 10:10. That was one relief, but obviously the big one was talking to the surgeon. We went back into the room about 10-15 minutes later, and now I'm finishing this post at night after a very long day.
When we got in, he was pretty groggy and clearly in a lot of pain. It turned out that the surgeon had some extra work to do. As we feared, he did have to chip away some of the bone to get it out, and the screws gave him a little trouble. We got the plate and screws as a souvenir, and the plate was so much smaller than we thought it was, even knowing that it was going on a small seven-year-old leg bone.
Jacob was struggling quite a bit. He finally got a dose of the hard meds and that helped him through that wave, but then when he tried to get up and practice walking with the boot and crutches, he got lightheaded and nauseous. He had to lay back down, and they gave him some anti-nausea meds, but those are sedatives and his body didn't respond well to that at all. He got tired, and every time he fell asleep, his respiration went down (his body forgot to breathe). His nurse was very attentive, sitting at his bedside for probably an hour watching his stats and periodically asking him to wake up and breathe deeply. Eventually she pulled out the nasal canula and put him back on oxygen. Finally the sedative got out of his system enough and he started to wake up and feel a bit better. He was strong enough to go for his boot and crutches practice by the stairs, and shortly after he got discharged. It was quite a stressful couple hours, though. I didn't think I'd once again be like a newborn parent watching my "baby" sleep so I could make sure he was breathing. It was a bit of a debacle to get him out of the hospital and comfortably into the van, but finally we got home with a quick detour to grab him lunch.
We were starving as well by that point and just made some food at home. He settled in on the couch, ate, had some ibuprofen, and took a couple naps. His mood perked up a bit by the evening, but it was interspersed with bouts of pain and frustration trying to get around the house. He was originally supposed to be able to get around without the boot, but it's definitely more comfortable for him right now and it keeps his foot positioned how they want it. I decided to indulge him and make the Aldi lobster tails I bought (in theory for New Year's Eve) tonight instead. It was more than I felt like cooking on so little sleep, but I know he appreciated it. I also grabbed him a little gift when I ran out to Wegmans that I'll keep to brighten his day soon.
So, all in all, it wasn't an easy day but we're happy the surgery is over. We know there's probably a harder road ahead than we were hoping, but sometimes the quickest way is through, right? Turns out Jacob apparently didn't have the faintest clue he could be even remotely this bad. I think the doctor was a little too optimistic and made it sound like it was going to be a cake walk. Obviously we knew it was surgery and would involve an incision at minimum, and possibly more, but it never really occurred to him that it would be like this. As I mentioned, I tried to carefully remind him it might be harder than he thought and that it wasn't something to take lightly. Of course, whenever I even vaguely mentioned anything, I was chastised by Craig or shushed by Jacob. I know it's a fine line, but I wasn't sure he truly understood what he was facing, and I know now I was right. So reality has now hit hard, but I know he will manage. He probably won't go back to school this week, as much as we wanted him to (and they thought he'd be able to), so he pretty much has three full weeks to rest. He has just under two weeks before his first follow-up appointment, at which time he might be able to resume some activities like training. He'll need to be careful for at least a couple weeks after that, but hopefully he can start getting back on track soon. We have to start somewhere, and here we are at a very tentative and challenging step one. It's a week until Christmas and things just got a bit more complicated, but I'm thankful we made it through the day okay and can get this show on the road.
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