Gannon’s Surgery: Complications Part Two

Whew! Are you still hanging on from that cliff hanger?

If you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, here’s this morning’s blog post – you should read it first or this post will be rather confusing.

http://www.thepinkshoelaces.com/gannons-surgery-complications-part-one/

After he left, he told us that Gannon was in recovery and we could go see him soon and someone would come to get us. We waited..and waited..and waited…45 minutes had passed. Where was Gannon?

FINALLY – probably a full hour after Dr. Storm told us the surgery had gone well, I was about to go ask someone what was going on, our nurse offered to take us back to recovery so we could see him.

Gannon’s recovery nurse Liz was busy working with him. Gannon was pretty slow to wake up but doing okay with some extra oxygen. Here is what we walked into:

It was kind of scary – I won’t lie. She was having trouble waking him up so I started talking to him. I couldn’t wake him up either – until I told him “Gannon! Mommy has a Ba-Ba for you!” (That’s what we call his bottle) and he started coming around.

Then things really got freaky, Gannon started coughing and coughing and having stridor – I found a video of what croup sounds like so you can hear what we heard. Gannon was struggling to move air through his larynx/voice box not only when he coughed but just when he was breathing.

I have heard this cough 1,000 times in the ER around 3 am. You can hear them checking in and everyone goes “Yup! That’s croup!” Carver had croup A LOT when he was little. It’s a narrowing of the upper airway.

Our nurse Liz seemed super surprised too. She called anesthesia right away and explained the situation. Usually Decadron (a steroid) does the trick and reduces the swelling so that’s what was ordered for Gannon. Just in general Gannon’s breathing wasn’t super. He had a lot of loose congestion and rattled when he breathed. We assumed the airway swelling was a result of the intubation from the surgery.

We were finally sent back to our previous room and now it was time to get Gannon to eat and drink. He was doing pretty good. They had given him Tylenol in the OR. They gave him a dose of Toradol in his IV, he still had the caudal block, and a dose of oxycodone. He was still pretty zonked from the surgery but overall recovering well except for that darn stridor/cough. We were actually told we were ready to be discharged and I asked if we could stay just a little longer until his breathing seemed better.

Gannon was comfortable – and then he wasn’t. Gannon started SCREAMING. He cried and cried and screamed and nothing made him comfortable. I couldn’t comfort him at All. He had already received all the pain meds he could get and he was still inconsolable. Craig and I rocked him and bounced him and tried laying him down. We even tried putting ice over his diaper to help with pain/swelling/bruising. This went on about 45 minutes. Our arms were jello from holding him and passing him back and forth.

Then Dr. Storm showed up at our door. He was surprised we were still here. He took one look at Gannon and said “We need to tuck him in for the night. There’s no way we can send him home with pain like this. Would you guys be okay with that?” YES. Not to mention every time Gannon became upset his breathing got worse and worse.

I LOVE that I didn’t have to ask or question anyone whether or not we could handle his pain at home. I so appreciate that Dr. Storm took lead and made the call to admit him. Our nurse Kelly totally agreed and we talked about how helpless we felt when he was screaming like this.

This was all great and fine but I had some phone calls to make. I took a walk to the cafeteria and got some AMAZING vanilla bean cheesecake and I called mom.

As much as Gannon is a priority in our life, Craig had a very important test to take the next day to become certified in pesticide application before planting season. Craig has been studying for weeks and it’s really difficult to reschedule. We needed to get Craig home. I would stay with Gannon. (by the way, way to go Craig! He passed with flying colors!)

So began operation skinny Pete – ha! You can read that post here if you’re up for a good laugh:

http://www.joscountryjunction.com/operation-skinny-pete/

Craig stayed long enough for us to get settled into our BEAUTIFUL room for the night:

Check out our view! We were on the ninth floor room nine which happened to be the exact same room we were in when Gannon was hospitalized a year ago! What are the odds?

Well, again, what a long blog post. I’m going to break this up into two more chunks. Sorry guys, nap time is calling me and the boys! Check back tomorrow morning At 5:30 am and tomorrow evening At 5:30 pm for the rest of the saga.

Find out about the rest of our hospital stay, the sweet thing they did for Gannon’s birthday, why Gannon is now on antibiotics, and why we had an ER visit this morning at 0430 am!