Wednesday!

Surgery is over!

I wanted to start with the most important part.  

Last week we expected the second part of the surgery to be on Friday, but it was moved up to today.  That became the theme.  It was supposed to be today at noonish.  Last night we were told 8am, and they'd come get Brennan around 7.  By 5am today we were starting to get ready to be taken to the surgery floor around 6:30.  Didn't matter.  It's not like any of us were getting much sleep.  I was at the hospital with Brennan and Alan was finishing up some work to free up his day that he wasn't expecting to be spent in the surgery waiting area.  It is way better for surgery like this to come earlier than expected than having to wait for a postponed surgery (that's what it was like on Oct. 23, 2006).    

The first thing Brennan's doctor did when he walked into the consultation room was hand me a small bag with the grid in it.  I had asked yesterday if I could have it when he got to the part of his talk when we were asked if we had any questions.  I thought maybe I could make earrings or something out of it.  I have learned that doctors aren't going to hand over something that had been in your kid's head if the surgery hadn't gone well.  Very well.  We won't know exactly how well until later.  Sometime between a month and a year or so will be how long it might take to be able to say how successful the surgery was.  But it went well, and that is a great place to start.  

Brennan had one last pre-op (and potentially ever) seizure this morning.  It was the staring spell (AKA absence/petite mal) kind that Brennan recently started having.  Nothing dramatic.  There was no shaking, no loss of consciousness, and he even knew his buzzword (after a tonic clonic seizure it could take 1-30 minutes for Brennan to know his buzzword "basketball").  I wasn't even in the room for it!  Alan was witness to it, but it was just like one he had yesterday.  I can take non-dramatic.  I embrace boring.  Excitement isn't all it's cracked up to be anyway.  

Here's to a whole bunch more boring days ahead!

This is the grid that I will be making something out of.

After surgery Brennan was taken to the ICU for the night.  He was sleepy, but a doctor was still able to ask him questions about where he was, what day it was, etc. and he could move his arms and legs.  Mostly he just wanted to sleep.  I went to go pick the girls up from school.  A friend was going to do it, but I really wanted to see them in person and share the news with some people at Brennan's former school.  We even ran into his pre-school/kindergarten teacher.  She had no idea he was scheduled for surgery, but said that she had been thinking of him a lot lately.  

Soon, I'll head back to the hospital and I can't wait to give Brennan hugs that weren't possible with the stuff he was connected to before (like cables we couldn't pull because they were attached to his head).