Go Dis Way! Go Dat Way!

What I constantly hear now in the car from my new back seat driver!

In other news...Aiden read his first book on the Friday of his surgery! I'm not kidding either!! He was sitting in his room just looking through his books like he usually does while Shannon and I were getting ready. I heard him talking, so went in to take a peek. He had one of his nursery rhyme books out (he loves to read the nursery rhyme books), and would say the nursery rhyme on the page, then turn that page, read the next nursery rhyme, turn that page and continued reading these until he was done with the book. He loves itsy bitsy spider, wheels on the bus, hickory dickory dock, and old McDonald the most.

Aiden's Surgery Recap

I know it has been 1 week and 3 days ago, and I have told many of you the details, but I thought I would share a more detailed explanation of our experience since I didn't get to talk to everyone.

Aiden's surgery was scheduled for 1:00pm, so we got him up early to eat breakfast because he could not have any solids after 7am, and then only clear liquids until 10am. We arrived at Children's Mercy Hospital on Friday February 15th at noon. We first met with a nurse who took Aiden's blood pressure, heart rate, etc. I think this is what she was doing anyway. We didn't have the most friendly nurse, she never introduced herself or actually told us what she was doing. Oh well, we didn't have to spend much time with her. This actually was the worst part of the day! He is such a tough kid! He was screaming the whole time and we practically had to strap him down while they did this. They actually wrapped the cuff around his leg which I had never seen.

Then of course there was some waiting to meet with the anesthesiologist. The anesthesiologist wore this big stuffed Nemo hat, which was perfect because Aiden really likes Nemo. Then we met with our surgeon briefly again and then waited a little more. Aiden had a great time driving the cars up and down the hall area. Then the dreaded moment came when the OR nurse came to take him away. We knew we couldn't go into the OR, but I thought we might be able to be with him while he got the anesthesia and until he fell asleep. We were told by the OR nurse, that we could not do that. We could walk out of the waiting area with them, then we had to go back into the waiting room and she would take him around the corner where the anesthesiologist would be waiting for him with his gas mask and Aiden would be asleep before he even got to the OR. I was not ready for this part at all, but knew I had no choice. We put him up on the big hospital bed, put the railings up, and Aiden says, "Go for a ride?". We went through the big double doors, and that was as far as we could go. Aiden waved good-bye, and says, "By-bye". Shannon and I both cried!

Within 30 minutes, the surgeon came back and talked to us about the surgery. He said everything went fine and that they did not end up having to put a tube down his throat, which I was very thankful for. He told us the hernia was quite large, but everything went well. Aiden received pain medication during surgery and would need some when we got home. Dr. Sharp told us he was still asleep, but would be waking up shortly and moved to the recovery room where we could then see him.

Shannon had to go to the bathroom, and of course in the five minutes he was gone, the nurse came to take us to the recovery room. Those five minutes felt like the longest moment in my life! By the time we got in the recovery room, Aiden was already awake eating animal crackers and drinking apple juice! He just kind of gave us this look, like Hey, where have you guys been? They then took the IV out, which was pretty tough, but of course no tears from Aiden. The nurses said they asked him many times if he had any "owies" or if anything hurt, and he never said or acted like he was in pain. We were given a prescription for some pain medication to give to him every 6 hours. We then were discharged and left the hospital at 3:15pm!

We got home, gave him the pain medication, ate lunch and watched his favorite movie, Cars. We kept him up until 9:30pm, to give him another dose of the pain medication. By Saturday afternoon Aiden was back to his usual energetic self! I am just amazed at how resilient children are and that he still to this day never once acted like he was in pain or that anything had happened to him. I am so glad he will not remember it!

He still has some bruising left and the bandage has not fallen off yet. There are no stitches, just this disolvable adhesive strips that will come off on their own. We go back to see Dr. Sharp on 3/4 for a follow-up appointment.

Thank you everyone for your kind words, prayers, emails, cards, etc. We are blessed to have such wonderful friends and family!

Hello? Is anybody in there?

The title to my first blog entry (yes, I am giving this blogging thing a try), is Aiden's new phrase that we have recently interpreted. Not sure where he learned it, but it is funny to us! The other day he was sort of "zoning" out and Shannon says to him, "Hello?" and Aiden says back to him, "Is anybody in there?". He is quite clever!!

Well, since I am not always that prompt with sharing pictures and forget who I have or have not told and shared things about Aiden and his new adventures, words, phrases, etc. I thought I would give blogging a try! I will try to put other interesting things that may come to my mind, but this will probably be mostly about Aiden and the things he does that we find funny, amazing, or things that we think only our brilliant child is doing!! So, I hope if you check in and read this every now and then you will get a sense of what he is doing and learning since most of you do not live near us to get to see him very often.