July 23, 2013
Today is the day, we got moving very early this morning, he cried a little for milk when Malia woke him up, but she was able to calm him down. He got his last food/drink at about 11p the night before. We arrived at KU Med at 9a and they had us back in pre-op pretty much as soon as we arrived on the second floor. His surgery was supposed to be at noon, but Dr. Schmitt (who performed the surgery) had a cancellation so Nathan got bumped up.
The anesthesiologist gave him some feel good medicine around 930a and by a quarter of he was quite loopy. He was giggling and babbling and when we handed him off to the doctor, he smiled and started making up words! It was the funniest thing, and it certainly was nice to see that just before he went in.
They told us the first 45 minutes to an hour would all be work to get Nathan ready for the surgery. The first thing they would do was put him in a deep sleep, then they would access his port. If needed they would run one or more IV lines and an arterial line either in his wrist or his groin. They said they would also give him a catheter, I was glad he was asleep for that part!
The waiting room was pretty interesting, it was equipped with what I called the leader board. When we checked in we were given stickers with a number on it, and we were given a slip of paper with a patient number on it. The leader board scrolled the patient numbers with their associated status, pre-surgery, in operation, post-surgery. In addition a nurse would walk around with a clipboard that had the lookup table on it, your sticker number associated with Nathan’s patient number. She let us know that Nathan’s surgery started around 1045a.
About an hour later a nurse came and got Malia, my mom and dad and myself and took us back to a little room. Dr. Schropp came in from the other side and sat down to tell us that Nathan was just fine. He told us that the surgery went better than anyone had expected, when my dad said textbook the doctor said it went better than textbook! Nathan’s tumor was completely removed, it appeared at the time to be completely dead but we wouldn’t know for sure until after it had been biopsied. He said that the tumor showed no signs of invading any of the veins and that it had reduced in size since the last cat-scan had been done a few weeks ago. He told us that the tumor had a nice bed that it was growing from and all of that had been removed, and it appeared there were healthy margins (good tissue) between the liver and where the tumor was.
He told us that Nathan had done very well throughout the entire surgery and while they had typed and cross matched his blood, he lost very little blood and did not need a transfusion. He told us that Nathan had a tube down his throat to help him breathe, a tube down his nose to clear out his stomach and a catheter. He said that they ran IV’s in his wrist and foot, and the arterial line was in his other wrist. He told us that they would keep Nathan sedated for the rest of the day so Nathan’s body had some time to recover, and that they would slowly bring him out of it the next day. He also told us to expect to be in the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) for at least a few days.
They brought us up to the PICU about an hour later to see Nathan. They needed that hour to make sure he was stabilized and to clean him up. It was pretty rough seeing him all hooked up to everything like he was. He is such an active little boy and seeing him laying there with tubes and wires all over was rough.
This next picture is Nathan in his bed, it’s not graphic or anything but I wanted to warn you.