Surgery Day - Waiting

Wow... well it's been a long day so far. It's 3:00 and Max JUST went in for surgery. For those of you who had different surgery times, let me run through the day for you:

I woke up early in Bellingham, prepared to make a relatively early drive to get to Seattle around 8:30 or so - plenty of time for a 11:45 surgery time. I packed up the car and was just heading into Burlington (that's about 30 minutes South of Bellingham) when Matt called me. The doctors had JUST been in and had moved Max's surgery time up to 8:30, as the schedule had been shifted. After slight panic, I focussed my energy and pushed the limits of the speed postings and made some calls while I drove, so as many people as possible could be informed of the time shift.

I arrived at Children's at about 8:15. At about 9:00, we started wondering... so Megan (Max's nurse for the last 3 days) said that they had moved his time to 10:30. So, we waited some more. Then, at about 10:15, someone came in to let us know that Max needed to have another MRI before surgery, so we sort of quickly shuffled him off to the Radiology lab where we... waited some more. We got back in the room at about 11. (My personal take is that we missed the 10:30 surgery slot because someone forgot to tell the nurse Max needed an MRI). At about 12:30, Megan came in again and said surgery had been moved to 2:00. Matt and I were about half starved, so Matt went and ate briefly while Max and I watched a movie (Pirates of the Caribbean). Just as the movie was getting over Max's Grammie (Christie Ostendorp, my step-mother) came to see Matt and me on her way through Seattle. It was a treat for her to see Max and for Max to get to see her. She and I went to the cafeteria for a late lunch and a quick chat. We got back to the room at about 2:15 to say goodbye and the three of us (Max, Matt and I) sat and waited some more.

I think it was about 2:30 when Prenny, our friendly Indian/British Anaesthesiologist showed up to let us know things were getting rolling. At 3:00, she gave Max some "happy juice" to relax him (It's like intravenous valium) and then let us walk to the OR doors where she went over some things to expect when he comes out of surgery.

Since he will be lying face down for about 4 hours, his face will likely be puffy and may have some redness down the center of his face. Also, they are putting in a "central line", which for us laymen means an IV in his femoral artery. This will help them to monitor his blood loss better, which is critical for this kind of surgery. She went over the usual risks and then we watched him being wheeled off into the OR.

They will be paging us in about an hour for an update and will continue to do so. The surgery itself will likely take about 4 hours. However, while he's under, they will do another angiogram, so that will be another 1-2 hours. I don't expect he'll be back in his room until 9 or 10 this evening.

Another heartfelt thanks to all of you who are sending well-wishes, either by phone, by email, or response to this blog. They mean a lot to us here. I am saving all of them to read to Max when he's back up and around. Matt has gotten quite a few, too. Max's class is putting a card together for him and I hope he'll have that this weekend.

I will post more as I know it.