Revelry

Back in my favorite room, the waiting room...just...um...waiting. Its 7:45 now and we have the place to ourselves. For some reason, the temperature was set at 33 degrees in here. Miserably cold. But we'll pass this test too. Today is the big day for Thomas. He's getting put back together. We did a late night visit after I got back from Belton and got up at o-dark-thirty this morning. Thomas is looking really good.

We got to go in before his surgery and Rebecca held him. Since it was technically still the shift change hour, we were in there by ourselves and for the first time ever, no alarms were going off anywhere. All of the babies were content in the early morning hours, just sleeping away. With each surgery you get to meet the anaesthesiologist and sign their consent form and then the doctor, to also sign a consent form. More of a formality and an opportunity to ask questions than anything else. I doubt at that point they get many people not signing. Our doctor, Doctor Hermann, is the same doctor who did the original surgery. He's an excellent doctor and seems to be an even better person. Although it had been a couple months and multiple surgeries a day, he remembered Thomas and us. He has an amazing positive attitude and quizzed us on bible verses that he was reciting. Sadly, although we knew some of them, we failed miserably on book and verse.

Because Thomas is a big boy now, he got to go to the operating room. The operations before were performed right in the NICU. They loaded Thomas into the this plastic box, which I believe is a replica of the one Houdini used in his magic show to escape from. Rebecca asked a very earnest question at this point: "Can he breathe in there?" Fortunately someone had the foresight to address this and avoid what surely would have been one of the worst design flaws ever.

We settled into the aforementioned waiting room for an undetermined period of time. It took only a half hour before we got word that it was done. A little while later Dr. Hermann came up and let us know how pleased he was with the operation. He said that he wished that all his operations had gone that easy. He had to take a very small piece of the bowel out that had not developed, but overall it was a great success.

They moved Thomas back and we waited for him to get settled before we went back in. He was still partially paralyzed from the anesthesia, which was a little weird, but it wore off. He had a very glazed look and just kind of stared off into space. It will take a few days for him to get back to normal and then they'll hopefully extubate him and begin testing to see if he will feed.

As of this afternoon, he was showing signs of pain, so they upped his dosage of drugs and he's been sleeping ever since. Which is very good. I'll update tomorrow.