Sammy's Surgery

As many people know, Sammy had surgery on his legs early Monday morning. I wanted to post an update earlier, but just haven't had a chance.

Sammy was so brave and such a good boy for all the pre-operative exams. I talked with him about what was going to happen the night before, so I don't know if that made the difference, but he was the calmest I've ever seen him at a doctor appointment.




The surgery itself went well. Our doctor at CHLA decided to put the steel plates on his femurs as well as the tibias since the femur had a 17 degree curve while his tibia has a 24 degree curve. The only bad thing about that is the femur will most likely correct itself before the tibia, so that those plates will most likely need to be taken out before the tibias have corrected themselves, so we will need two more surgeries instead of just one.



As we were told, the first 24 hours were the worst, he was in excruciating pain and couldn't even talk--just moan and cry, it was absolutely heartbreaking. Needless to say, neither Sam nor I got much sleep that night--I got about 4 hours or so and I think Sam got 3 (we traded off who slept and who watched Sammy). It's difficult to even move him around because of where the incisions are and you can tell that any movement is unbearable for him.

I'm so thankful for our good friend Annette, who is also a pediatric orthopaedic surgeon, as she has been so great about checking in on Sammy and providing some much appreciated advice to help Sammy be more comfortable. It definitely worked because by yesterday afternoon, Sammy was trying to talk his dad into taking him somewhere because he was bored with sitting on the couch for the past 24 hours. So Sam took him to the car wash, El Pollo Loco for a quesadilla (for which I am glad because Sammy hadn't eaten anything since Sunday night at this point) and they drove around Pasadena and Highland Park following the Metro Gold Line train that Sammy loves. They were gone for about 3 hours and arrived home just in time for the next dose of painkillers--which at this point he definitely needed.

He fell asleep at 6:30pm (along with Hannah--yay) so I put them to bed early and wondered what time the pain would wake him up. He woke at 11:00pm in terrible pain and I stayed up with him until about 1:30am (Sam had to go to work today, so I wanted him to sleep). He then slept until about 4:00 and then he needed the pain meds again. It really seems like they wear off after about 3 hours, but it says to give it to him every 4 hours and I don't want to overdose him, since I am also giving him Ibuprofen every four hours as well.

He also still hasn't really eaten anything besides a few sips of a smoothie and a few handfuls of cereal, so he obviously isn't feeling too much better, but I'm just thankful that he isn't writhing in pain on the couch and crying hysterically about "owwies".

He still can't move his legs, so I'm hoping he will make some progress in that area in the next few days. I'll keep everyone posted.

Thanks to all for the phone calls and emails checking to see how we are all doing--and especially to Shelley for watching Hannah for me for 9 hours (and making us a yummy dinner) on Monday and to Valerie for helping me out with both kids that evening. I couldn't have managed without them.

I'll post another update soon. Happy 4th of July to all!