Recovery (cross-post)

Ben's surgery did take the whole 8 hours that they said it would. He went in to surgery around 8am and we finally saw the neurosurgeon at 4:30pm when he came to find us in the parent waiting room. He told us the surgery went really well. They cut 44% of the rootlets which within the normal range for this surgery. Dr. Farmer thinks that Ben is good and strong and this surgery should be a good thing for him (I so wish he'd be more specific than this!)

We had to wait a few more minutes for him to make his way to the recovery room and then we finally got to go and see him. It is such a relief to finally see your child after surgery. Even though he was in pain and unhappy, it was just so good for me to see and touch that little face.

After some quick visits from Grammie and Grampie, Clarence and I hung out together with him til about 9:30 when Clarence headed back to the hotel to get some sleep. Only one parent can stay over night and really that makes more sense than both of us getting no sleep.

I stayed up reading and comforting him (when needed) until around 11pm. By then, I was pretty sleepy so I asked the nurse to bring over my bed. It was great. They had a hospital bed for me that they made the same height as Ben's so I could sleep right next to him. We both slept on and off til about 3am. Sometimes it was Ben that was awake and needed comforting. Other times, it was one of the 2 babies in there crying that kept us awake. This really bothered Ben. I just couldn't seem to explain well enough to him why these babies were crying.

Between 3 and 4 is when the pain started to ramp up. And it in this time that we found out that Ben was being transferrred to the ward and out of recovery. So off we went....to a PRIVATE ROOM. I couldn't believe it! I never thought we'd have a private room.

Once we got settled there, they gave him a bit more morphine and after some crying for his daddy, he managed to settle again around 5am. I managed to sleep more in the chair next to him until Daddy arrived at 6am to relieve me. Of course, just as I'm heading out, Ben becomes very upset and agitated again...it seemed the pain was back. I waited until the nurse found him some valium before I headed out. The nurse was also trying to track down a doctor to up his epidural as she thought he shouldn't be in that much pain. So hopefully that has since happened.

It is now about 11:30. I managed to get about 4 hours sleep and now I'm having toast and coffee and writing this update before packing up some snacks and heading back to the hospital. I was pleased to see a Facebook update from Clarence saying that Ben was doing better and watching his favourite video...and back to "just" complaining about laying on his tummy for 2 days and that Ben thinks that is FOREVER...well, it sure feels like forever!

I haven't really had a chance to check out Ben's new legs yet. When he was sleeping, I didn't want to disturb him and when he was awake, he needed so much comforting that the last thing I thought of was touching his legs. Hopefully today, we'll get to see and feel the difference!