The Littlest Patient

On Tuesday, June 17, Benjamin had surgery. I will spare the details here - if interested in more info, please ask. We had been told the procedure would be easy on him and by later that day, he would show no signs of having had surgery. We figured the hardest part would be keeping him away from food and drink as he starts talking about eating before he even wakes completely. For some reason, he gave us no problem about it. We had to check him in at 9:00AM. His surgery was at the local Children's Hospital and you could certainly tell that they had worked with children before. They did all of his pre-op work in a little room we referred to as Toy Heaven. I have never seen so many toys and books in such a little area. They even had a bubble blower going which he took great interest in until they put the blood pressure cuff on his leg. He did NOT like that thing. With all the business out of the way, we made it back to our little waiting area where he was assigned his hospital attire. He opted for his red crocs over the hospital booties. Unfortunately, they need to work on their scheduling a little bit. They didn't come to get him for his surgery until 10:45. Even in toy heaven, that was a long time to wait. He did get to practice his driving a lot, though, so that was fun. One of our ministers stopped in and we were able to visit with her while we waited. She asked if we'd like to pray and Benjamin said, "Yeah." He folded his little hands and bowed his little head. It was pretty cute if I do say so myself. When they came to get him, they let us carry him to the end of the hallway, then they wisked us away. I was glad it worked out this way because I had said before hand I thought the worst part would be when they wheeled him away from us screaming on his little bed. So just seeing a nice nurse carry him away was better. During the procedure, he was put under, of course. Could you imagine doing surgery on a toddler when all you could do was continually say, "Sit still, please. Stop kicking, please." Probably would not work so well... His surgery lasted a little over an hour, then we had to wait for him to wake up. The nurse came to get us and she said, "He is not very happy with us." We turned the corner and could hear him screaming bloody murder. Apparently, he did not like waking up in a strange location without daddy and I being there - go figure, right? He didn't really calm down for daddy or me either until we walked out of the hospital. They had given him some apple juice and he sucked that right down. We got home and put him down for a nap. When he woke up, it was as though nothing had happened. He couldn't go in the pool for a week and he has two little surgi-strips that we are still waiting on to fall off, but other than that we'd not know he'd been through anything. For which we are truly thankful. And hopefully, that sums up our children's hospital experiences for good. (Um, did I just jinx us???)