07 Mar “I’m A Real Boy!”
I’m very sorry this took so long to post for those of you who have been waiting and praying patiently for today’s outcome. Everything went fine; it was just a very long day. Before I go into detail, thank you so much to everyone who remembered and prayed for Keegan today. As it has every time before, your prayers pulled him through.
We were supposed to be at the hospital at 11am for 12:30pm surgery. At 8:30am this morning, we received a call asking us to be there by 10am because someone had cancelled, leaving an earlier opening for us. That’s great…except we were letting Keegan steal a little bit extra sleep, and we were still in our pajamas enjoying a lazy Saturday morning on a Thursday. Those of you who know me know that getting my entire family out the door from pjs in thirty minutes is an impossibility, and yet, we made it. And early too! Of course, this was all for naught, as we didn’t even get into surgery until 1pm anyway.
The line removal went really well. Dr. Garcia said it just simply pulled out and didn’t even bleed after compression. We were worried she would have to cut into his leg to pull it out, but she didn’t. They were also able to use the line for anesthesia before pulling it, so they didn’t even need the IV line they started in his hand. We didn’t even get to finish our lunch before he was finished. However, Dr. Garcia talked us out of the circumcision for now. She was extremely nervous about it due to his immunosuppression and being on steriods. Steriods severely limit the body’s ability to heal wounds and can decrease the ability to clot. Even though steriods are necessary for transplant patients at the beginning, the combo is very dangerous for someone who also can’t battle infection. SO, when your surgeon is visibly shaken by the idea of cutting on your son, you decide not to let her try. The new plan is to do it while he is in cath lab for his heart biopsy in September. At that point, he’ll be less suppressed and will be off steriods for a month. Dr. Garcia seemed much more at ease with that, too.
It was a little unnerving to be back at CMC for surgery. The practice in day surgery is just the opposite of the CVICU. Everyone gets called back into a conference room for a briefing from the surgeon. Of course, we weren’t informed of this ahead of time. If you remember from the CVICU, if it’s good news, the docs come out to you in the waiting room. If it’s not, you get called back to a conference room. Needless to say, when the nurse came out and asked us to come back to the conference room, I was not a happy camper. But wait, it gets better! As Gray and I are sitting there with the door open, Dr. Leonard (Keegan’s cardiothoracic surgeon) comes walking around the corner. There was a brief moment of sheer panic exchanged between all three of us. The voices in our heads thinking something’s seriously wrong for them to call him in, and his voice thinking something’s seriously wrong for us to be sitting there. Turns out it was all just happenstance for him to walk by, but a few more gray hairs popped out nonetheless.
We didn’t get home until 5pm because of the snow that decided to fall while we were at the hospital. Ya know, Texans completely flip out when the white stuff starts to come down. Keegan’s doing alright, but he was pretty up and down until bedtime as expected. Gray and I are so proud of how he did today. He’ll keep the dressing on for three days, and then his skin will be able to breathe for the first time in 6 months! His swimsuit came yesterday, so he’s ready and raring to hit the pool!
We posted a few pictures from today and from last night when Keegan had his last kitchen bath and dressing change. There are captions on the pics to explain some of what you see. Oh, and the caption of this blog entry makes sense if you’ve seen Shrek 2 – all Keegan’s “strings” are gone, a real boy at last. Thank you to everyone who worked on him and came to check on him today. We can never repay the wonderful people at Children’s for helping us to take one more step to a normal life with our miracle boy.