catching up...

I know, I know... it's been a while. And you'd think that being housebound would give me lots of time to blog! We've been enjoying family time since the surgery, so I haven't been on the computer as much. So let's get caught up....


We had a good first day home on Thursday. Tate had a good day, relatively pain-free. He only had pain meds one time that day, but I did end up calling the doctor on call at the hospital because of the amount of bloody drainage on his bandage. They never mentioned anything about how much we should expect, and when the bandage that we were supposed to keep on until Saturday began to "overflow" a little by Thursday night, I was worried. The doctor was very nice though, and said if it was saturated by Friday to bring him in, but otherwise, it sounded like it was perfectly normal. He had a good day Friday also, and the bandage didn't get too much worse, so we knew we could hang on until our appointment Saturday morning. He only needed pain medication once on Friday also, but I ended up calling the hospital AGAIN on Friday night... Tate's eyes started itching (both of them) really badly after his afternoon nap on Friday. We could not keep him from rubbing his eyes. We were literally trying to hold his hands down so he wouldn't rub his eyes, but we could hardly keep it up. After about 4 hours of this (and his good eye was all red and puffy because of rubbing it so much), we finally called the doctor on call to see what we could do, and what might be causing the horrible itching. He had no idea what the cause could be, but we were told to get Zatidor (an antihistamine eye drop) for his good eye. That worked wonders! But there wasn't much we could do about the other eye, and he had been messing with it so much that blood was soaking through his patch. I just held him and held his hands until we both fell asleep. 


Our appointment to get his bandage removed was at 9am on Saturday. I was REALLY nervous about this because I just didn't know what to expect. As some of you know, I have a weak stomach! I held Tate on my lap as the doctor (not our surgeon, but a doctor on his team) took Tate's bandage off. Since he was on my lap facing away from me, I couldn't see what it looked like until after she cleaned it up (which I figured was just as well). He definitely had some bruising, but the swelling was quite a bit less than we expected. Tate complained of pain as she cleaned up his eye, but he seemed to be doing ok. She had me lay Tate down in my lap so she could show us how to apply the eye ointment. Somewhere between her opening his eyelids and applying the ointment, Tate became very pale white as a ghost, super clammy, and passed out in my arms. I don't think the doctor realized it at first... she finished applying the eye ointment (which only took a couple of seconds) and I asked her if Tate was ok. I told her he was very pale and clammy. She said she was sure he must have just fallen asleep (ha! Not while she was doing that!) and that he was fine. She started calling his name, smacking the back of his hand, telling him to wake up... she got a little louder, and he was still unresponsive. So she started pressing his fingernails, then took his pulse. I was talking to him, pleading with him to wake up, calling his name... still, no response. I finally said, "Tate, you gotta wake up buddy! After this, we're going to Krispy Kreme to get donuts. What kind of donuts do you want?" Another moment of silence. Then, I hear the tiniest whisper... "Chocolate." I have NEVER been happier to hear the word chocolate in all my life! (And I'm usually pretty excited about that word!). I was so relieved that he was ok, but it was a big scare!




My mom took these photos at his appointment on Saturday morning... 

 

See the color difference after he passed out? In Mom's defense, I don't think she realized he was unconscioius when she was taking this one!

Well, let me just say that putting the eye ointment in is a LOT easier when the kid is unconscious! To administer the ointment, he can't move at all. After removing his eye, the surgeon placed a conformer in his eye socket. The conformer is a clear plastic piece like a big contact lens that is a place holder until he gets his prosthetic. The conformer has 2 holes in it... one toward the inside corner of the eye socket, one toward the outside corner. We have to take the tip of the tiny tube of ointment and place the tip inside the hole, then squeeze the tube until we see the ointment fill in the whole area behind the conformer. Sounds like fun, right? We have to do this twice a day (morning and night). Some days are easier than others, but it does seem to be getting a little easier as Tate gets used to it, and as his eye heals. It takes two of us to apply the ointment, so I'm hoping this is just something we have to do until his followup appointment on Thursday morning, and not for the next 6 weeks or so until he gets his prosthetic!

I have been really pleased with how well Tate is doing. He is happy and playing with his brothers and friends. He loves when visitors come to see him! He isn't complaining of pain anymore. Praise God! He even seems to have a little bit of a sense of humor about it! Noah (our 8 year old) mentioned something last night when we were cleaning his "eye" about his eye being red. We both shushed him, because we didn't know how Tate would react to the comment (especially since we were in the middle of doing his eye ointment, and let's face it, it's hard enough to get that done without comments from the peanut gallery). So right after our concurrent "Shush!", Tate pipes up with "Noah, that's not my eye! I don't have an eye there anymore!" I was waiting for him to add "Duh!" but no luck. Noah, in his constant state of happiness, just smiled at his funny baby brother putting him in his place.