Piya's Perspective

Extremely long day.  We brought Simeon to the hospital around 7am.  That was the toughest part for me.  Waiting for the anastesiologists to take him.  Both anastesiologists and at least one nurse stopped by to introduce themselves and say hello, and around 8:15 Simeon was carried off.

Then there was the waiting.  We were alerted by page when each milestone came and went and the first alert (that surgery had begun) was about an hour to an hour-and-a-half later.  The next alert had me a bit nervous initially – why would be getting a second page so soon after the first? what went wrong?  Turned out the bypass machine was on and all was going well.  We were then paged when he was safely off the bypass machine again and one last time when they were closing up.  Around noon, the surgeon came out to let us know how everything went.  Apparently the hole was a larger than he expected from the previous ultrasounds, but it was in an easy to get to place and they didn’t see any leaks.  Overall, things went smoothly and they’d let us know when we could see him in ICU.

After grabbing a bite to eat, we received a page that we could visit him.  It wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected.  Whether I held up because my motherly instinct kicked in or because I had prepared myself for worse – I don’t know.  He had (and has) quite a few tubes sticking out, but he was covered with blankets so we didn’t see everything all at once and the nurse was doing everything she could to keep him comfortable. 

Around 2:30 or 3, he passed the first hurdle – removing the breathing tube. They had to stop the anastesia and wake him first, and when he woke up he was pissed. I think they wanted to wait for his heart rate and blood pressure to go down, but it didn’t happen – it stayed around 160 for the most part, though he hit 180 or 190 at one point.

I stayed by his side for a little bit and then went downstairs to contact a few people.  When I got back to his bed about an hour or so later, they had removed the catheter and he was back in a diaper.  Still quite pissed off and in a bit of pain, but looking more and more like his old self.

After dinner, Ari came in to say good night to Simeon and then went home to get some sleep.  I had managed to secure a room for the night, so I stayed in Simeon’s room for awhile.  Simeon still wasn’t happy, but his heart rate and blood pressure were lower.  Eventually, the nurse was getting nervous about giving him even more morphine and tried some Benadryl.  That seemed to do the trick.  With the help of Benadryl, sucking on my finger and some soothing music, Simeon eventually fell asleep (around his normal bedtime).  I’m sure I dozed off for a bit, but finally headed up to my little room for the evening around 11:30 or midnight after meeting the night nurse.

The room was definitely designed for somebody who just really needs a bed.  Small room and hard bed.  Enough to get me through the night, which is all I needed, but I’ll be so happy to sleep somewhere else tonight.

I woke around 3:45 or so and went to see how he was doing.  They had just given him an x-ray and the nurse was feeding him some Pedialite – and boy was he guzzling this stuff down.  We gave him a tiny bit more, but he wasn’t happy when he discovered we wouldn’t refill it again.  I gave him a finger to suck on, and we turned on a little music to help soothe him.  I was really happy to see that event upset, his heart rate was no higher than 130s – and generally stayed under 120.

He finally fell asleep a little bit ago and now I’m getting ready to do the same.  They’ll page when it’s time for rounds and he should be out of ICU by this afternoon.  Here’s hoping eveything continues to do well.  Thank you again to everybody who’s thinking of us – he’s doing extremely well and he’s on the fast track to full recovery – I couldn’t ask for more.