Surgery finished at 2:30, a complete success, five-and-a-half hours after we started, just like the surgeon estimated. A few hours in the post-anesthesia care unit, and an extremely grumpy Jon is now in his own room 5A27. Peter’s heading home in a couple of hours.

Well, we’re past lunch now and we’re still here, as families come and go. The Room seems lighter than past visits –a lot of the procedures are an hour or less, so the parents aren’t nearly as worried. The “lifers”–folks who in for 4-6 hours–have started to spot each other, but any small talk is subdued. Everyone is dealing with their stress as in their own little ways. Laura exaggerates me doing work 🙂 —I have one task that is the computer equivalent of folding laundry. Takes my mind off the moment.

Jon should be out in the next hour; when he’s past the groggy stage we’ll let you know, and we’ll also let you know what kid of hardware he’ll be wearing for the next six weeks. Stay tuned.

An hour and a half into the operation and no news is good news, I guess… We haven’t been able to get the free wifi working with our laptop yet 🙁 so I’m typing this on the hospital library computer.

Quite the range of parents/relatives and surgeries in the operation waiting room: One family was out within half an hour and got a little lecture about dental health (bottle mouth?); I’m guessing that another toddler is in for cleft palate reconstruction. Peter’s actually getting some work done, while I’m doing mindless sudokus and getting stumped on ridiculously easy ones.

Four more hours to go….

Well, here goes Jon’s third major surgery, almost eight months to the day of his second one. The operation starts this morning at 8 a.m. at Sick Kids, but of course that means we’ve been at the hospital since 6 a.m. (in part making sure the kid isn’t tempted to eat or drink anything right before the surgery.) Surgery is estimated to last five or six hours. For details on what’s being done, read about Jon’s first operation from six years ago (start at the bottom of the page), and pretend it reads “left leg/hip”.

There was a bit of tension when Jon got winged by whatever virus is going around just before the March Break. You have to be healthy to go into surgery. He shook all of the symptoms easily, save for some sinus congestion that just…kept…holding…on. But he’s mostly better, and the anaesthesiologists say that this is minor and not an impediment.

Huge thanks to Pam who is dogsitting at our place throughout the day and trying to ensure that poor Photon won’t go too mental.