Lightening Online

Nurses deal with this stuff every day. To them it’s just routine. But what about for the parents who have never had a child go into surgery? Routine? I don’t think so.

The sights and sounds around me are so unfamiliar as we begin our small procession to the operating theatre. The nurses are discussing their night life while I follow silently being. Hoping that my baby will know I’m there even though he can’t see or hear me.

It strikes me as ironic that we have to wheel his bed past the kitchen. All these patients that have been fasting for hours, passing by the sounds and smells of the hospital kitchen as they head off to theatre. Maybe food is the last thing on their mind? But that chicken sure does smell good.

More questions. Questions asked over and over. It feels like a test. Will I get the answers right? I’m on automatic pilot so I’m not even sure what the answers are. But somehow I manage to know and say yes and no in what I hope are all the right places.

Are you going into theatre with him? I must have nodded because they’re handing me blue things and a white gown. The nurse kindly helps me into the slippers and the gown but hands me the hat.

“Is that alright?” I ask the nearby nurse. She laughs. “You’re not supposed to look good in them”, she says to me. “Good?” my mind tries to process through the fog. I don’t think I was worried about looking good. I’ve never done this before. What if I put the hat on wrong and cause a problem in the theatre? Who wants to find out their own stray hair killed their child? There’s no mirror, I can’t see if my hair is all covered. I say nothing in response to her. What can I say? Does she realise that none of this is a joke?

He is shivering uncontrollably. The nurse brings a heated blanket to put over him. He makes a comment that I should do this for him at home when he’s cold. The warm blanket seems to help ease the shivering.

The doctor looks strangely familiar and yet unfamiliar at the same time. Is that even possible? I’m not really sure what she’s saying but I follow her and my baby past the green line that prohibits non authorised people.

The theatre doesn’t really look like those on TV. It’s smaller. And crowded. I can’t get far enough in the door to allow the automatic doors to close. I’m scared to move for fear of being in the wrong place.

My baby might be 10 but he looks so little as they transfer him onto the operating table. Why won’t they let me near him? I want to ask them where I can go but my mouth is so dry that words seem impossible.

He doesn’t want a needle. His biggest fear right now is pain. My biggest fear goes far beyond the pain. But I don’t let him see that.

The doctor sends me around the other side of the table. That’s better. Now I can touch him. He can see me. And his little eyes are pleading with me not to make him go through this.

I can’t cry. I have to be strong. I can’t let him see how I really feel. Everything is happening so fast. The doctors are talking. I can’t take it all in. They try to put a mask over his face. He doesn’t like it. Says he can’t breathe.

The anaesthetist has a quiet and soothing voice as he asks me questions about Lleyton’s involvement in football. He’s trying to distract him. Get him to relax. My heart almost stops as I watch the colour drain from his face, leaving him pale and almost lifeless. His eyes begin to flutter shut and my heart cries out, “please don’t let his last words be ‘I don’t want a needle’”. Horror stories of people not coming out of an anaesthetic rush through my mind. I try to push them away, focusing on what my child needs right now.

Before I know it, a nurse has ushered me from the room. Just before I go, the doctor tells me that they’ll still need to give him a needle. I remember nodding. At least I think I did. Back over the green line, the nurse takes my protective garments and pushes a button inside the lift.

“Do you remember where to go?” she asks me. I have no idea, glad that she’s at least pushed a button so I’ll make it to the right floor. She begins to give me instructions but I can’t take them in. “I’ll ask someone if I get lost”, I manage to utter. She steps back and the doors close. When they open, I see and smell the kitchen. A familiar mix of sound and smells. I know I’ve been here before.

As I walk, nothing looks familiar. I keep walking and spot a section of the hospital undergoing renovations. Thank God for renovations. I remember seeing them when we were first taken to Lleyton’s room. My heart silently pleads, “please still be there”. As we left, I told Farmboy to go and get himself something to eat. Now, I desperately hope he hasn’t.

He’s still there and the tears come in a rush. Was it really only 6 hours earlier that we were thinking our trip was likely to be a waste? The signs were all there that the problem was resolving itself and we fully expected the specialist to tell us our child was fine. Instead, she’s saying surgery and most likely he’ll lose an important part of his anatomy.

Those 6 hours had been surreal. Lleyton wanted to put off the surgery until another day. I had to stay strong and positive for him. Now I can finally let the tears come. None of this seems real or fair.

Farmboy holds me as I sob, relieved that I can finally let go and not try to hold it all together.

It’ll be okay. It HAS to be.

We pray and we talk. Before long, the doctor is there with good news. Everything is still alive and functional. The relief is immense.

I want to go to him but they tell me to wait. That they’ll bring him back as soon as he wakes.

What they didn’t count on was his shivering. He has to stay in recovery until it stops. It takes a number of warmed blankets to get it under control.

He sees me as his bed is wheeled back into his room. The tears well up in his eyes. “It hurts”, he tells me. It’s obvious he’s been trying to be strong but all he wants is mum.

I find out later that he was asking for me but they told him he had to get warm first. When he woke up there was a grey thing on his finger. The first thing he did was pull it off. The nurse immediately put it back and told him he had to leave it on. His poor mind was confused. They weren’t supposed to operate on his finger.

Should I have followed my instinct and gone to him? Would they have even let me in? What are simply moments to them felt like a lifetime to us while we waited. A lifetime to him when all he wanted was his mum. A child should have their mum in moments like these.

He wasn’t supposed to stay in overnight. A simple “day surgery” operation. At 9pm the nurse decides that perhaps they’ll keep him in overnight. He isn’t interested in eating and is quite tense. The pain seems greater than expected but perhaps that’s his own level of coping. It’s always hard to tell in these circumstances.

They bring me a fold up bed but I hardly sleep. It’s comfortable enough but the sounds of the hospital and the awareness of my child in the same room perhaps needing me make sleep hard to come. I lie there in tears, trying to work out how we’re going to get through the 6 hour drive home. Who do I turn to for help? Our GP is new - I don’t know if I can call and talk to him. If our old GP was still here, that’s what I would have done. The specialist has said we’re fine to go home. There’s nothing more she can do.

I try a pharmacy along our way. The assistant plies me with questions about his surgery. Queries why I don’t think the pain relief I’m buying will be enough. Does she have any idea how far we have to travel? How uncomfortable he is? How hard it is to put your child through the trip because really, there isn’t another option? I’ve had very little sleep, been through a heap of stress and just want some help. Why is help so hard to find?

---

Thank you for your kind words of support and prayers during our recent ordeal with our 10 year old (yeah, I refer to him as my “baby” because he’ll always be my “baby” - even though he’s also the eldest).We are home now. The trip wasn’t too bad for him. I did end up getting some Phenergen in the hope it would make him sleepy. He didn’t sleep but it did relax him which I think make the trip more pleasant.

It is good to be home. Much more comfortable to be in our own beds and Lleyton is well on the road to recovery. Given the sensitive nature of the problem and how public this blog is (Lleyton and his mates sometimes read it at school), I need to be careful how much information I put here. I have blogged about this with more detail on another of my blogs. I can’t link to it here (or it defeats the purpose) but if you’re familiar with my other blogs, you should be able to find it.

I slept until 2pm yesterday and spent the rest of the day pretty much brain-dead. Today I’m still tired and just taking it easy in the hope my body will recover as quickly as possible. It hasn’t really come at the easiest of times in terms of my coping, given I’m trying to withdraw from AD meds. However, I seem to be coping okay, other than the extreme tiredness.