He is fine

“He is fine.”

Those are the words Dr. LaQuaglia utters the second he opens the door of the consultation room after surgery. He knows full well that those are the three words the parents on the other side of the door want to hear first when he walks in. At this point, if he didn’t start out with those three words after a surgery with Eli, my heart rate would probably immediately skyrocket.

Dr. LaQuaglia was able to find the obstruction and remove it. There was some adhesion of the bowels to scar tissue resulting from his earlier surgery, which can be somewhat common after a major surgery like he had in October. The surgery took about 1-2 hours. The interesting part was that this was classified as an emergency surgery and it still took over 3 hours for them to get the OR ready after they decided they were doing surgery. 🙂 Eli was in pain the entire morning and by the end of it was saying, “I’m just ready to get this over with so my belly will stop hurting.”

Now comes the road to recovery. He is being transported to the Pediatric Observation Unit at Sloan, which means we don’t have to go to the ICU at New York Pres. across the street. That is a huge praise because the POU at Sloan is SO much better than being in the ICU.

Eli is going to have an NG tube down his nose for a few days while it gets out the excess bile and air until his bowels start to clear. Dr. L said that we should get him walking, as soon as tonight, to help them “wake up” after surgery trauma. Eli does NOT like the NG tube, so it should be an interesting couple of days. At least he’s not on a respirator! He does have an oxygen tube going to his nostrils though, so hopefully those can come out soon as well.

Eli was responsive when he first woke up and asked for his forehead to be itched. It’s an effort for him to talk because of the NG tube, so he usually takes a big breath and almost yells what he is trying to say. When I left, I told him that I loved him and he took a big gulp of air and belted out, “I love you too” in a crackling voice.

We of course are doing the switching game since Isaiah can’t be inpatient with Eli. Lacey is with Eli right now and we’ll switch later tonight. We’ve already had some offers for babysitting services since we’ve made such good friends here. This will likely be what it’s like for the next week or so. You never ask Dr. LaQuaglia a timeframe because the answer is always, “as long as it takes.” We’ll be praying for a quick recovery so we can all be back together again.

It is certainly odd to have him laughing and playing and running around with his friends one night and by the next morning be scheduled for an emergency surgery. However, we’re glad we are here and have such great care. Now Eli has one more scar to show off when he gets older. This one should be a vertical line by his belly button to go nicely with his Verizon Wireless scar on his belly/back and his other minor scars and tattoos.

I don’t know what they’ll do about stem cells, we’ll probably just have to do them all over again some other time. Tentatively next week is supposed to be his dentist appointment on the 10th and his PET scan on the 11th. We’ll see how much of that is still possible when the time comes.
Thanks, as always, to all of Eli’s Prayer Warriors for being “at the ready” to pray for Eli at a moment’s notice. We certainly appreciate knowing that we can count on you guys for that. I’ll keep you updated on his road to recovery from this surgery.