Before/During/After

Before:

Before his surgery he was given "goofy juice". Basically a sedative to make the separation part (when the anesthesiologist takes him to the operating room) less obtrusive. At first it was working well. He was EXTREMELY goofy! He was playing hotwheels and giggling. He was DRUNK at four! ;) After about thirty minutes of sillyness he became extremely frustrated. He was inconsoleable and couldn't communicate clearly. It was torture for him and for us. He has NO recollection of any of this, THANK GOD! The anesthesiologist carted him away screaming and kicking. This was the beginning of the drama!!!

During:

During the surgery Carsyn had MANY people waiting in the wings. Praying, crying, making small talk, and just trying to make the time pass. He was taken to the OR at 7:27. The surgery (the incision) did not begin until 8:35. We got hourly updates from Nurse Kathy, who seems more like an old friend. At 1:23 he was out of the OR and Dr. Mendeloff came to tell us that the surgery went well. The growth was larger than they had originally believed, but his heart was as close to normal as ever! He was off of the heart/lung bypass machine (life support), but was still on the respirator. The entire family lined the corridor waiting for the surgical team to wheel Carsyn by on his way to the CVICU. Minutes (which seemed like hours) ticked by before they wheeled him through. After a quick kiss they whisked him up to the CVICU where we went to sit patiently in the waiting room. His precious ICU nurse escorted Chad and I to see him around 2:30. He was off of the respirator, but still hooked up to many iv's and oxygen. He looked well, considering, and I was just relieved to see his precious face!
Carsyn's ICU nurse was happy to see him moving to the regular floor. He was still insistent on wearing his Camo scrubs and was listening to his new CD player...Honky Tonk Badonk. (Thanks Meme for getting it for me at 7am!)This is ONE day post-op. (FRIDAY) He is living the good life. Between spurts of pain he was eating {mcdonald's, compliments of Nana}, listening to music, and basically having ANYTHING he asked for! Which at times was a little extreme. "Meme I'll dry this mess up if you'll go get me a 'good' pappy." (Right now at 3AM on Saturday morning in DALLAS!) The truth is Meme had already gone to the nursery to get a pappy after much insistence from Carsyn. He sucked it for a few minutes, but he wanted the REAL thing!Although he looks VERY well adjusted, these pictures are small snipets between all of the drama he went through. We figured out sometime Friday evening that he was having an adverse reaction to MORPHINE, which is EXACTLY what they were giving him when he seemed to be out of control with pain. He would flail around, hit, kick, scream, say mean and terrible things to anyone within earshot. Some of the things he said were "You don't love me. I'm going to hit you. These doctors are terrible and I'm going to cut them with a sharp knife. Nobody cares about me. Nobody loves me. I don't like these nurses. I'm going to cut these tubes out. You don't even love me at all or you'd make them stop." All the while he'd be grabbing and pulling at tubes and wires. Finally after we realized that the morphine was making him a little crazy, the nurses started giving him different pain meds and everyones life (especially his) seemed much happier!

After:

The chest tube came out Saturday and he was a happy camper. They kept him one more night just to make sure. He enjoyed the last day in the hospital being spoiled rotten, having picnics in the hallway-serving up red doritos (at midnight) and pulling around wagon with Weston.