Nate Update......

I took Nathan to the hospital early Tuesday morning for his rendezvous with doctors and their mad operating skills! It was still black outside when we left the house. He was in strict fast-mode with no food or water, but--poor me, I was starving! So I asked if we could stop at McDonald's for a quick sandwich to tie me over till lunch. I hate eating in front of the fasting...so I ordered him a McStarvin'. [I'm still laughing about my courtesy order for him! He said it wasn't funny but he did say that it was OK to eat when he couldn't. Just goes to show you that you lose you're sense of humor when you're hungry! Just sayin'...]

But it was a rough morning, all the way around. He wasn't excited about having another surgery. He didn't want the doctor recutting the mega scar he already had and he didn't want any new scars. Catch-22. The policy at Shriner's is to take the youngest children to surgery first. Ironically, Nathan was one of the youngest that day, so he was first. We met with his surgeons, Dr Tompkins and Dr Balog first to make sure that we understood that there was always some risk to removing hardware--slippage, breakage, and minor bleeding. The hardware was impinging on the hip joint and they were not only anxious to get the pins out of the way, but to check his range of motion without them present. They also used a dye to see if there were any blockages or bony build-ups between the backside of the femoral head and the hip itself.

Then another obstacle. Nathan's arms are not the easiest to get an IV in. (In fact...it was brutal and had almost everyone in tears.) Special lights, J-tips, and tourniquets were not working! Eventually, the anesthesiologist had to put both IVs in after they got him on the table and out with laughing gas. It was rough going for one vein, let alone two. Poor guy! His arms looked liked pin cushions when he was done.

The surgery nurse's job was to call us on the phone in the family waiting room and keep up posted as to what was going on throughout the surgery. When Dr Tompkins came in to sign his leg in the pre-op triage, I warned him that the last surgeon took almost 2 hours to get one screw out and bruised her fingers from applying so much pressure to the curating spoon. He chuckled and said that they had some tricks up their sleeves and it should only be about 45 minutes to an hour. I just told him "Good Luck!" and they took him back a little before 8am.

Dad joined me after he had the unheralded pleasure of getting the other four off to school. He thought Nathan would be in the recovery room by the time he got there. He ended up waiting most of the time with me and being in on the calls. The first call was to let us know that they were in his hip and things were going as expected. The next couple of calls just said that things were going fine. The third call, after two and a half hours, said that they finally got the first screw out! Yikes. It was harder than they expected, but they would be removing an additional screw while they were in there.

There was two more calls over the next hour and a half. So much for 45 minutes! Dr Tompkins said that I called it right! The heads had been overgrown with bone and the first screw had actually bent, which was why it had taken the first two plus hours alone. He was very surprised that there had been so much force to bend the stainless steel screw! An additional screw had to be removed just to get that one out.

Things didn't look good inside the hip though. The cartilage is gone. The hip has collapsed and arthritis has set in. But removing the screws will help alleviate the pain and the stiffness in his walking and movement. We didn't realize how painful it was for him to even sit. The muscles around the hip are trying to remodel and help correct itself by turning into bone! (I didn't know that was even possible.) Dr Tompkins said that we needed to start thinking about hip fusions or hip replacements in the not too distant future. He mentioned some of the hoops that we'd have to go through to get Nathan in to see the best surgeon for pediatric hip replacements. Fortunately--Nathan is considered an "extreme" case and he shouldn't have to wait too long to see the specialist. And we are thrilled to know that Dr Lovell liaisons with Shriner's...we'll just take it as it comes for costs. We have to investigate all the options because the choice will affect his livelihood and ability to move.

He had to be admitted and stayed the night at the hospital. They ran some IV meds that he needed throughout the night and we had to wait until he could get up on the walker and use the loo. He's non-load bearing on his left side for a whole month. But we are working on getting him ready to go back to school next week. He just has to be off the hard meds that make him loopy--so he can focus. He is also taking a pain reliever and strong anti-inflammatory to help with the arthritic flare-up in the hip. It causes bad acid reflux, so they also ordered Prilosec to help with that. He's riddled with oral medications, but the best one is the one he can hold and love on while he's cooped in the house--Molly!

And leave it to the brothers....the boys enjoy teasing Nathan when he's "high". Cameron thought it was pretty funny to ask him questions that required some thought...like, "Are you married?" and "Where do you live?" Of which, Nate said yes or I don't know to. It had them in stitches laughing and so the jokesters look forward to about 20 minutes after pill-time to start their humorous chat sessions with Nate. All of which, Nathan, generally, has no recollection of.

Sleeping definitely heals the body. And it's kind of nice to see the boy sleeping instead of being up at the crack of dawn. But we were a little alarmed, when our normally alert boy decided to make his pain mobile. Crutches and walkers do not slow him down when he wants to move. He gets around the house pretty well, courtesy of lots of past experience, but it's the meds that tend to slow down his plans for returning back to the starting point. Here he is, asleep in a chair in the office, when he fell asleep talking to me as I was writing this blog. (I'm sure I'll hear about it later--but I KNEW he was out when the flash from the camera failed to wake him up!)

Poor Nate. Just a few more days of this and he'll start feeling more like himself. I gave him a treat of soda from a glass bottle when he got home from the hospital. It was mine from New Year's eve and he must have had his eye on it for a while because he noticed it was missing yesterday. He asked me where it went...and I asked if he remembered drinking it. Nope. Well...as long as he's not hurting, right?

When he "wakes up", he's looking forward to playing with the new games that he received from the hospital--electronic Monopoly and a Skate Tech board.

Although, things weren't as encouraging as we had hoped for--Nathan has a great attitude and tolerance for the rough state of his hip. We've set some goals for him, as parents, and he's looking for to some great things this year. Nathan also has his own goals...and it should be interesting to see where we are this time next year. We're truly grateful to the wonderful team of doctors, nurses, and staff at Shriner's that have worked tirelessly to help him get back to moving and being a kid again!