Ten Days Out From Surgery

We are ten days out from surgery and things are getting better...slowly.

I failed to understand how painful this would be. I guess once I heard the words "out" and "patient" something in my head equated it to "easy."

That, paired with the experience we had with his VNS implant surgery left me feeling over confident and under prepared for how Christian might do.

His VNS surgery was a breeze. We had one afternoon of crying. Then he bounced back as if nothing had ever happened.

But this was different. We needed heavier pain killers and for longer.

Christian stayed out of school for the entire week and we went ahead and kept him out this week. He's had good days but there has been a lot of whining. And it's off and on. He'll have a really good day followed by a really hard night. And vice verse.

We had his follow up appointment today, which I was looking forward to because we ran out of the medication that would keep him comfortable. And we needed more!

Christian cried the whole 45 minute drive there and back. Luckily, he could show the doctor just how much he needed that prescription filled and we were on our way.

The thing is that when we discussed the surgery prior to going through with it, the doctor said it was a simple surgery. He said that turn around time was three or four days. He said people are usually weight baring right away. No big deal.

Today I told him Christian was having a hard time and he told me, "Yeah, it's a really painful surgery. It takes like two or three weeks for the pain to completely go away."

Okay. Well, that seems different than what we discussed before. What's done is done, I guess, but at least I could have better prepared myself and better prepared Christian.

I mean it's not horrible. He'll just wake up in the middle of the night whining so it's hard for him to get a good night's sleep. He also gets really upset when he wakes up for some reason. Maybe he's stiff? Crying fits are back again. We had come so far! But now they're back and I don't know if it's pain related or just that he is having a hard time calming himself down. He's also still very sensitive to positions and where his legs are at all times. I just want him to be okay again.

So it's ibuprofen around the clock with shots of the harder stuff (Lortab) when he's extra irritable.

All of this surgery stuff really makes me wonder - Isn't there a better way? There has to be a better way. Because I really don't want him to go through another surgery ever again.