The First Surgery

I finally got some sleep after what was probably the longest 24 hours of my life. When I woke up, I was in SLC. My wife was still at our local hospital. My son was in a glass box at another hospital. Not a great first morning for a brand new family.

And to top it all off, we realized we didn't have insurance yet. My wife's employer does provide health insurance, but we are both still young enough to stay under our parents' insurance so we didn't think to get insurance through her employer. Then we found out she was pregnant. After the deadline. We did great with putting it off until the very last minute. We had planned to get insurance the week before he was scheduled to be induced. Then he was born a week early. Oops.

So the first thing she had to do right after being discharged, instead of heading straight to SLC to see her boy, was to limp over to the insurance place and get our kid signed up so we could tackle the massive medical bills that were headed our way. We had already gotten a ton of grief from our local hospital for not having insurance.

In the meantime, I was heading over to the hospital with no form of identification. I had no idea where my wallet was. It was somewhere...in Utah. The security guard was nice enough to give me a hard time and almost refused to allow me to go upstairs to see my son. Exactly what I did NOT need after what I had just experienced in the last 24 hours. Luckily, my dad was there to vouch for me and I finally got upstairs.

My kid had a huge gauze bandage around his abdomen protecting his liver and was hooked up to a massive ventilator. But no more glass box. Whew. The surgeon was running a little behind, so I got to hold him for a few minutes. My wife had just finished with the insurance place and was sprinting up to SLC hoping to see our son before he went in for surgery. She got there with some time to spare and got to hold him as well. It was a nice tender mercy for both of us.

Then the surgeon came and his team wheeled our son off to the surgery room. The surgeon again explained he would try to cram the whole thing in at once and call it good. But he wasn't sure if it was possible. So we sent him off and went into the waiting room. About 50 years later (2 hours), the surgeon came out and said everything went great. 

You closed it up?! 

"Well...I didn't close it up quite yet, but I got pretty close."

"We'll plan on another attempt in two days."

Two days? But that's...in two days.

It blew our minds how quickly the surgeon wanted to proceed with a one-day old baby. But he assured us everything would be just fine doing another procedure that soon.

It is unbelievable how much medicine and technology has progressed. We are eternally grateful for this surgeon and how much he took care of our son.

So we headed back upstairs to get a look at our little boy. We were prepared for the worst...we had no idea what to expect with seeing his liver almost in his body, but not entirely. Thank goodness for gauze...

The surgeon had sown a mesh fabric into his skin and used that to build what he called a tent. He would be using that tent to slowly stretch his abdomen skin and muscles together. Again...this kid is one day old.

I'm done for the day when I get a paper cut...how is my son already tougher than me?

Granted, he was on alot of medication...aloooooooooot of medication. Like paralyzing medication. He literally looked dead when I first saw him because he wasn't moving or breathing himself. He was on a ventilator that was breathing for him. Upon closer inspection, I could see him vibrating with the ventilator.

Can we hold him?

"Absolutely not. Not for several weeks."

And the good times keep rolling...

But hey...good news, I found my wallet later that day!