Nightmare Surgery Saga

Warning: This post gets a little graphic and very long. But if you handle a long story, read on.

On May 27th around 11:00, I took Jake into the Southwest Idaho Surgery Center for an extremely routine, outpatient surgery: tubes in his ears and getting his adenoids out. This was his second set of tubes, so we even knew the drill. Not even a bit nervous, Jake knew he was in good hands. That little mask would put him to sleep and he would wake up half an hour later in my arms. No problem!

They didn't even put that IV in until after he was asleep.

He woke up pretty groggy and with a headache, but still my happy little Buddy.

Ben and I were planning a little trip for the next day, but we decided to see how Jake was doing before we really took off. The next morning Jake was feeling great. Since we had done this before and knew the recovery was quick, we left the kids with Grandma and Sassy and drove to Seattle for the weekend. Jake did very well, while we were gone, but on Monday, he started to get a headache. We were up all night that night. Jake was in so much pain that he couldn't sleep. I started to give him Tylanol and Ibuprofin when the pain was really bad. I did this for a couple of days. My friend who is a nurse told me to not let the medicine wear off. By Wednesday, after alternating the two medicines every three hours for two days straight, I called the doctor. He said that was a pretty unusual reaction and prescribed him a stronger antibiotic. We took the full round of antibiotic for 10 days, but I was still giving him tons of Tylanol and Ibuprofin. Nights were terrable, and he would wake up in the morning moaning in pain. He missed an entire week and a half of school. He would be o.k. with pain medication, but as soon as it wore off, he would go down in pain. We had Ben's entire family come and visit for a family reunion. Even Jake's cousins from Alaska came and surprised us and Jake was extatic! I knew he was in a lot of pain when he couldn't even play with them. Finally on Sunday, a week and a half later, when Jake was laying on the couch in so much pain, amidst a frenzy of playing cousins (there are 14 of them now), I paged his doctor in desperation. He told me to bring Jake in. After looking at him, saying everything looked fine, but that being in pain was highly unusual, he prescribed a steriod. I left the office in tears! How could he everything be fine if he was in so much pain. I wanted my happy, healthy buddy back. I wanted him to enjoy his last week of school, his cousins, baseball, and his birthday was coming up. He would say things like "Mom, what if the doctor can't make my head feel better?" I felt so helpless, but I knew that I would take him to every doctor in this country if I had to. So, after being on the steriod for a few days, I still wasn't seeing an improvement. His doctor ordered a CT scan to see what was going on. Here he is acting so brave again.

We loved this nurse, she made him laugh so hard. He had no idea what was about to happen.

Then she started putting in the IV. I had to look away.

Yipes! He was so brave, I couldn't believe it. I'm pretty sure I didn't handle an IV that well when I was in high school.

The cat scan machine was pretty cool, though. Kind of like Star Wars.

This kid was so brave! Here he is with his war wound and a popsicle. Way to go, Buddy!

So, the ending of the story goes like this: the cat scan came back perfect. Nothing out of place. A couple days after Jake finished the steroid, he stopped having headaches. Almost a month after his initial surgery, everything was fine and he was able to enjoy his birthday party with some buddies, the day before his cousins went back to Alaska. The night after they left, he threw up all night and was fine the next day. Poor kid! My guess is that it was all the pain medication I pumped into him so he could enjoy all of the fun things we did with the family. Why we struggled for so long, I have no clue, but I am so glad that it is all over! And let me just tell you that watching Jake suffer like that was one of the most heart-wrenching things I have had to go through in my life. I know there are millions of mothers who have had to endure so much more and I am grateful that this has been the worst of it for me. Jake was so unbelievably brave and strong throughout. I just can't tell you how grateful I am to have my happy little Buddy back!