Notes from the Cath Lab

And now the gory details...

I set my clock for 5:15 on Wednesday morning. So of course I woke up at 4:17. Sigh. Jed woke up early too, before 6, so to keep him from thinking about breakfast we got him dressed and Jim bundled us both out to wait for the bus. Waited about 20 minutes; walked all around the bus stop, looked at other people's gardens, counted the other people waiting for the bus. By this point Jed can say that he's going to the hopital.

We check in and are soon called to a room, where we meet one of the anesthesiologists and another of the cardiac cath fellows. The nurse invites us to come choose a toy, and while I'm chatting with one of the doctors he decides he wants to be held and jumps into her arms, thereby endearing himself to the entire staff (apparently this doesn't happen often). She was our nurse for the rest of that day, and he alternated between calling her "friend" and "lady".

Jed in tiger hospital gown. I give him the sleepy drops to chug, and I'm told that he will be mellow but awake. After about two minutes his head starts to seriously nod, and then he's out in my arms. While he was going down I sang him our little song about all the people who love Jed, and he said "Mommy" sleepily, so I sang him the "Mommy loves Jed" verse again and he went to sleep with a smile.

And then the doctors came back in and I put him down on the bed. The head anesthesiologist said, "Wow, he's so asleep we won't need any more anesthesia!" which for sticking a tube up from your groin to your heart is entirely unrealistic and in that second I didn't realize she was joking. She could tell by my face. Anesthesiologists don't make good standup comics, and parents who are about to send their child off with a bunch of doctors don't make a good audience.

Soon he was surrounded by a bunch of highly qualified people in blue scrubs, at which point I almost lost it. I must've looked pretty stricken, because the head anesthesiologist gave me a pat on the shoulder as they headed out. I went to the waiting room and didn't cry. Discovered that knitting is better than reading for not thinking about other things. I get the first call from the surgery room (they call you instead of having you stay in the waiting room so that you don't wig out the other patients, I think). Jed is doing fine, his vitals are good, they are starting to get data. Jim arrives after dropping off Gus at school, bearing a bag packed for a week's stay. Apparently I look bad, b/c he takes me out for breakfast. Note: if the place that sells you the muffin doesn't also carry butter, it means the muffin is already so full of butter that it doesn't need any more. Probably not the healthiest breakfast.

Back to the waiting room. A good friend who happens to be in the area comes to distract me while Jim boots up his laptop and starts to work. Second call from the lab: almost done, waking up Jed in around 15 minutes. What? It's only been 2 hours. Must be that they couldn't fix any holes here, so we're staying for surgery tomorrow. Dang.

Soon they call us back, and one of the fellows tells us that they put in 2 devices and everything is fixed. I almost fall over. So fast? Sometimes it just goes really well, he says. An excellent outcome. We hustle back to the room where Jed is coming to. I park myself on his bed and we put on a video. Jim says a prayer of thanks and then heads to work since there's not room for three on the bed. After the video both Jed and I have a nap (remember the 4:17 thing?). When he wakes back up we watch another movie and have some brief battles over staying still, but really he does fantastic. We have some juice and crackers, and later a late lunch. The mac and cheese is really quite good. Around 4 p.m. the nurse says he can get up and go for a walk, so she brings him some slipper socks and we go touring around the ward. It's a tiny ward, but Jed is so tired of sitting that we do laps for about an hour. The nurse has other work to do, so she does it and Jed gives her a hug or a shout-out every time we pass like he hasn't seen her 2 minutes ago.

Over time all of the doctors come by to check in. We see both cath lab fellows, both anesthesiologists, Jed's cardiologist, and eventually even the head cath doctor, who pioneered this treatment in children and has done more of them than anyone else in the world. I get the impression he did this one because there might have been surprises. "He has a good heart," he says, then explains, "We just didn't know."

In hospitals time doesn't pass like I would normally expect. I'm told that soon we will be sent down for an xray, and I think that means within 15 minutes or so, but actually it's an hour. Hurrah for a diversion, because Jed is so bored of the walk by now that he's trying to bust into the other rooms to say hello to the patients. My apologies to the parents of the baby he was trying to stalk. He does love babies. And then he's standing in the doorway of our room, calling "Laaaaady!" down the hall in the hopes that our nurse will come and play with him.

Wheelchair ride down to xray. He's now an xray pro. Everything looks great; the devices look like two little spiders in his heart. After around 6 months the skin will grow over them and they will just be part of his heart forever.

Back to the room. Try another video. Getting sleepy. Uncle Mike and Aunt Sarah arrive to great excitement that can't be sustained. Nearly asleep when dinner comes. Jed eats like a hog and crashes at about 7:30. I keep myself awake until 9 and then curl up next to him on the hospital bed.

Not a hugely restful night but not bad. Several times Jed rolled over and disconnected an electrode, which caused his electronics to beep and the nurse to come in and reconnect him. Around 3 a.m. my eyes bothered me awake and I had to go to the bathroom and do hot washcloths for a while. When I came back he was up and said, "Mommy, you back!" So thankful he didn't panic. So we went back to sleep again. Around 6:30 things started to hop in there and we just kept working to sleep through it, until 7 a.m. when the echo-man came and told us to be ready in about 15 minutes (finally, a man on my kind of schedule!). Jed lay calmly through the whole echo, which would have been impossible 6 months ago and which still surprises me even though he was watching cartoons. The echo man and I have a nice talk about science and puzzles (he started as a lab technician, but really finds echos to fit his puzzle needs better since he gets an answer in around 20 minutes rather than months. There is a lot to be said for that). Back to the room, where breakfast is waiting. We talk about colors of the Froot Loops and suck down some juice.

Apparently I have a REALLY cute kid. I heard some variation on "How cute is HE?" at least 30 times, and this is a children's hospital in which I assume that cute kids are a dime a dozen. The anesthesiologist says that some kids are cuter than others (but we don't go around telling the other parents that). One of the day nurses stops by and says, "How do I get to take care of YOU?" and our new day nurse says, "Sorry, he's yesterday's model."

The nurse practitioner comes in to give us discharge instructions. Jed's cardiologist comes to visit pushing an echo machine; she really wants a couple more measurements of the tricuspid valve. She explains what she's measuring, and upon understanding it I tell Jed that he has a nice Vmax. She says, "What do you do again?" Scientists who are recovering engineers are doubly weird people. The new days nurse comes in to remove Jed's IVs. Time to get dressed. Waiting the last 10 minutes for Daddy to come is torture. Out of the hospital by 9:30 a.m.

Note that I am really impressed with Children's on how they managed our expectations. I have the impression from the doctors after the procedure that the outcome we had was a reasonable expectation, but before it they had us completely ready to do surgery so that we wouldn't be crushed if it happened. Mind games are not always a bad thing.

I still can't believe I get to sleep in my own bed tonight!