Wells' Surgery

Wells had his dermoid cyst removal surgery the end of February at Doerenbecher's Children's Hospital in Portland and it went so well.  I was worried about having him not eat 4 hours before the surgery but the timing worked out just fine.  I set the alarm to feed him at 3:30am and his surgery was at 7:30am.  I think it was two hours before the surgery he could have clear liquids so we gave him some Pedialite on the way to the hospital and that held him over.
Once it was go time I handed him over to the nurse and they took him back where they put him under before they had to insert an IV. I didn't have to worry about him getting poked and me not being there to comfort him.

They gave us a little pager and there are screens throughout the hospital with a number on it associated with each patient in surgery.  The screen tells you where they are in the surgery and they page you once they are finishing up.

While Wells was in surgery we went to the Starbucks right there in the hospital and pretty much as soon as we finished breakfast they paged us to let us know the surgery was about done (it only took about 45 minutes).

Before going back to the recovery the doctor came and talked to me to let me know everything went great and it looked like a classic dermoid cyst.  She removed some skull but it should grow back quickly since he is so young.
Brooklyn wasn't allowed in the recovery room so once he was ready I went back there while Thomas stayed with Brooklyn in the waiting room. In the recovery room there he was sitting up in his little crib looking a little groggy but not crying or anything.  I didn't expect him to already be awake! He was groggy and ready to nurse but never seemed like he was in any pain at all.

The nurse gave us this cute little certificate that says his first haircut was at Doernbecher's Hospital and in the clear baggie were a few snips of hair.  I thought this was so thoughtful.  I was expecting way more hair to be cut but you can hardly tell at all where it was cut and because there are stitches on bottom and it's glued on top of the skin you really wouldn't even known he had had the surgery.

After hearing the discharge instructions we were able to leave and head back to the hotel.  Once we got back to the hotel he threw up all his milk but other than that there were no issues.  He was pretty sleepy the whole day so I hung out with him in the hotel room while Thomas and Brooklyn had fun at the pool.
The next day we hit the ground running for some family fun time in Portland.