Home, sweet home

After being thoroughly prepared to spend the night in the hospital, we are, praise the Lord, sleeping in our own beds tonight. It was a long day, but we are so thankful to be at home together.

I mentioned the pre-cath went well, the cath itself went well (details to come in the next post!), the last two hours before discharge went well. It was the two-hour war we waged post-cath that has us exhausted tonight. Even at 6 months old, we remember Luke fighting to come out of anesthesia — fighting so hard he popped his access site and bled like crazy an hour after his first cath. It was the same today (thankfully minus the blood!). He just gets into this state of aware-fogginess and he does not like it. We held his legs, we offered him the sun, but all he could say and cry about was his I.V. He wanted that thing gone and there was no reasoning with him.

After we got him to finally drink some water, Dr. S. okay'd removing the I.V. and that helped a bit. He still whimpered and cried a bit, but at least he wasn't nearing hysteria anymore.

Child-life came in at one point to see if they could help and of the eight toys she introduced to Luke, this one musical fish toy caught his attention. It was so interesting, he actually would hit the on/off button really hard and the child-life specialist encouraged him to hit it and be mad. I actually think that helped a bit. He was ticked and he needed a way to express that feeling. Every so often he'd reach for that music-maker and take a whack at it.

There was a point where the nurse offered to give Luke a small dose of Versed, to help him relax a bit, but Dr. Stefanelli came in about then and said that may just delay everything and at some point we'll need to get him through the worst. We agreed and held off and soon after Luke started to relax on his own. You could tell he was coming through the anesthesia: He would listen to you and answer, his speech wasn't as slurred. After about two hours, he got much, much calmer. He was content to have his pacifiers and watch JayJay the Jet Plane.

30 minutes of calm led to visitors! Grandma Cindy, Yvonne and Papa Pat came to see him and help keep him occupied. It was at this point, about 1:30, we saw a smile break through. His appetite perked up a bit and he ate goldfish and graham crackers and french fries from the famous Frisko Freeze across the street from the hospital.

At 2:15, Dr. Stefanelli came back in, took one more blood pressure (which, if elevated, would have kept us overnight), deemed it "perfect" and said we were good to go home. We didn't argue, but were polite enough to wait until he left the room to start packing our bags.

We were on the road by 3:00!

This evening at home Luke has been grumpy and whiny, but we're home, all three of us.