Well, I’m able to post from the hospital tonight, so I will! The muscle spasms were quelled when I got here, but then got far worse around dinner time. He had more valium after dinner and really re-laaaaaxed. He started reciting his lines from Looney Tunes slightly slurred but with great enthusiasm. This went on for about two hours. Very funny, since it’s the first that Jon’s looked out of pain since surgery. It took Jon another hour to get to sleep, itching and pulling on his various tubes, including the catheter (ow!, but he can’t feel it because of the epidural). He’s starting to stir now (11:00 pm), and this may be the firt trouble of the night: all of his drugs need recharging at the same time and ACKKK the epidural alarm just went off, twice as loud as an alarm clock. Hey, Jon didn’t wake up. Well, we’ll see…signing off for the evening…arg, second alarm…man, it’s like mission control here!
First Day Post-surgery
Now back to our regularly scheduled topic…
Last night and today was a day of alternating calm but grumpy sessions and agonizing muscle spasms. The pain-management team has ratcheted up the levels of medication in his system a bit—more Tylenol, higher doses of epidural narcotic, and some valium-like medication in his I.V. for the muscle spasms (I forgot what it was called. I’m tired.)
Consequently, Jon was a bit spacey today, which made entertaining him a bit hit and miss. He wanted TV, videos, DVDs or videogames, but only particular ones. I picked up a handful of videos from the playroom cupboard; only Dora and Blue’s Clues would do. When a hospital staffer couldn’t find the Elmo Nintendo game that he remembered playing last time we were in hospital, Jon was downright snarky. He also developed an unattractive habit of calling “Nurse! Come!” in the same commanding tone he uses for Photon.
This would all be annoying except that much of the day he really is in pain: every time he gets repositioned in bed (every few hours, to prevent bedsores), when he gets his bandages checked, or otherwise gets poked and prodded by hospital personnel. Add to this the muscle spasms, his lack of sleep because of all the noise and taking of vitals every few hours, and you end up with an extremely ticked-off customer. And who can blame him?
(A very peeved aside here—Jon’s hooked up to a machine that monitors his heartrate, breathing rate, oxygen saturation, blood pressure, etc. etc. If Jon’s vitals change significantly (if his 02 level drops, say) it starts to beep loudly. I always assumed that this was something we’d just have to put up with. However, last night the machine was beeping so often that the nurse finally took pity on us and turned off the signal in our room, but still keeping tabs on him from the nursing station. I didn’t realize you could do this—why the heck don’t they do that all the time?!)
OneZone digression
We were hoping that the downtown free high-speed wireless internet network (Toronto Hydro’s OneZone) would allow us to make hospital blog posts, check our mail, etc., from our laptop. Here is my review of the service (written from my at-home computer, for reasons that will become obvious):
In the O.R. waiting room our MacBook found the wireless network easily enough, but we kept getting error messages. No biggie, we figured we were not getting a strong enough signal in that interior room, so we’d wait until we got to Jon’s room, where there’s a window. In Jon’s room we did get a better signal, but we had noticed in the signup instructions that it said once you access the network you’ll get a browser window automatically come up with the sign-up/login page. Oh, really?
After calling their support line we find out that this is a Windows-only thing; he gave me the sign-up web address over the phone. Not impressive, and kind of silly. What’s the point in making your sign-up/login page super-secret and inaccessible from your own website? He also warned me that OneZone does not support Macs. Stupider and stupider.
Once on the signup page, you enter your cellphone number, and get text messaged your login ID and password. If you put in spaces or hyphens where you enter your cellphone number, you get an error message (but nowhere does it initially warn you to leave them out—poor UI design). After four tries using two different cellphones, we finally got our ID and password.
So how was it? It’s slow. Reeeeally slow. I don’t know whether it’s just because I had a poor signal where I was, or if it’s a Mac/Windows thing, but I gave up making blog posts or accessing gmail because it just took forever. Peter and I successfully managed to iChat for a bit, but my messages kept piling up and then appearing in his window all at once, which I suppose is okay if you like non-sequiturs.
Luckily for our hospital stay, Toronto Hydro has extended the free access period—it was originally going to expire early March; now it’s early April. After all that hassle, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to pay for it!
Osteotomy Wrapup  Evening 1
Happier times in a smock before the operation.
Laura and I are alternating days at the hospital, and she chose the grueling first night. As I was about to leave shortly after 6 pm, Jon started complaining about pain in the hip and within about ten minutes he was wailing in pain in waves. Muscle spasms were breaking through the pain control provided by the epidural. Very stressful. But the Pain Management Team rep was there quickly, and Laura reports that by 8:00 Jon was sawing away in comfortable sleep.
Jon watches his DVD player
I cannot overstate how impressed we are by the surgical team and the staff around them at Sick Kids. Very professional, very understanding and sensitive to Jon’s needs. I’d praise them more but I’m exhausted and it’s time for bed.
BTW telephone number at the room is [removed–ed]. Visitors are more than welcome.
5:30 p.m.
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.
1:00 pm
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.
10:35 a.m.
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….