A Year Ago Today My Wee Nut Had His Second Heart Surgery

I didn’t realize until last night when I was think about his surgery last year, that the anniversary of his second surgery was another contributing factor in my feeling down. I think it affected me differently because it was something we had spent months planning. It was so much different than when Owee was born, and we had no idea that he had a Congenital Heart Defect. The anniversary of his birth hit me like a ton of bricks and I was shocked at how emotional everything made me, I talked about it here in this post.

After he came home, we went to appointment after appointment, from his pediatrician to his cardiologist, and back and forth for months. It was a very long and exhausting couple of months. At one point they thought his oxygen was dropping too fast, and scheduled his surgery for the beginning of September, but then after a cath procedure to look at his Heart, they decided that it would be OK to wait until October. It was good to know that he was doing well enough to wait another month, but at the same time it was emotionally draining. We spent weeks shuffling around our schedule to clear the time for his surgery, and recover, made arrangement with my family to come help out with the kids, talked to the school about the older kids and mentally prepared ourselves for his Open Heart Surgery. A few days before his scheduled surgery in September they called, and told us that they were pushing his surgery back another month. Logically, this was a good thing, emotionally, I was drained. I has spent so much time preparing our family for this, then nothing happened, and I had to start all over again. At this point I didn’t know whether the roller coaster was going up or down, I just knew I had the knot in my stomach, and it wasn’t going away anytime soon. I started over, got everything in order, and spent the next month thinking about his next surgery, all over again.

We spent the night before his surgery in a hotel close to the Hospital. Just their dad, Wee Nut and me, while the rest of the little Nuts were at home with my parents. We went out to dinner, enjoyed our time together with our little Owee, and tried not to think about how serious the next day would be. Logically you think, surgeries like this are performed every day, and he is going to be just fine, emotionally, in the back of my head I was thinking that this could be my last night with my little Heart Baby. I remember holding him tightly that night wishing that time would stop, and that we didn’t have to do this again.

The next day we went in early for his surgery. I felt like we were in the pre-op room forever. I felt like time actually did stop, I was in a place that I couldn’t escape from, and I didn’t want to be there. He was miserable because he hadn’t eaten since the night before. I just held him trying to make him feel better. Eventually, they gave him a sedative that relaxed him, then took him away. I don’t even remember who it was that took him away, I just watched as he put my little Owee’s head up on his shoulder, and as they walked away and Owee looked at me, I felt again like I was betraying him.

I felt like it took forever, but of course he came out of surgery just fine. It was a longer surgery than his first one, which made me worry even more, but he is strong and he is a survivor. After his surgery I wrote a quick post here to update everyone.

He was in the hospital for just over a week, recovered quickly, and has continued to grow, and get stronger every day.

In the back of my head is the lingering thought that he will need another surgery again in the next year or so. It is a hard burden to bare, knowing that I will be once again sending him off to surgery. Knowing in reality that he will be just fine, but worrying that he my not. I tried to get a picture of him this morning but he is not into being photographed today, so I found this one that is from about a month ago. He is strong, happy, and always on the go. Looking at him today, and on days like when this photo was taken, I try to push it all out of my head, and think I will worry about his next surgery when the time comes. On days like these though, I just wish it wasn’t so hard.