Hernia Surgery - A Success! Day 185

Resting after surgery holding Tutu's finger

Yesterday Benton had his hernia surgery and it was a resounding success! Our not-so-little fighter totally rocked out his surgery and is now recovering as we speak.

As the days leading up to the surgery began to slip by, my nerves definitely became heightened.  Knowing that your child is about to get reintubated, go under general anesthesia and head off to the OR for major abdominal surgery - its understandable to be nervous...but I think my nerves were even more heightened due to the fact that Benton had been intubated for over 4 1/2 months and no one could tell me for sure how long he might be intubated after surgery. 

The morning of his surgery we awoke with nervous energy and headed for the hospital approximately 4 hours before he was set to go to the OR and it's a good thing we did because his surgery was moved up from 1pm to 11am.  As we arrived in the hospital we saw an empty crib since Benton had been moved back to an open warmer as they prepped him for surgery.  The doctors had inserted an IV and stopped his feeds in preparation for the anesthesia.  By the time we had arrived they had also given him paralytics and reintubated him.  Seeing my beautiful boy zonked out and intubated was definitely one of the harder moments that I have been through in recent memory.  But I just kept telling myself that this hernia surgery is one step closer to going home. 

As we sat with Benton and told him he would do great during surgery, the nurses came over and told us it was time to head to the OR.  We were shocked as we thought we still had hours to go before surgery!  The doctors and nurses loaded Benton into a transporter and we walked with him to the OR to speak with the anesthesiologist before they took him away.  Waiting for Benton to come back from surgery felt like torture, but before we knew it the nurses told us he was finished!

Walking back into the NICU and seeing your baby resting peacefully after surgery feels like a weight has been lifted from your shoulders.  As we watched Benton slowly come to he definitely began to realize that he was still intubated and he didn't like it one bit!  Within minutes of his anesthesia wearing off he was trying to rip out his tube and thrash his head around.  It was quite impressive to see our little guy so feisty after having surgery.  Because Benton made it so very clear to the doctors that he wasn't going to stand being intubated the doctors made the call to try and extubate him.  So within an hour of surgery Benton got extubated!!!!  The doctors didn't even extubate him to CPAP but extubated him to High Flow of 4 liters.  What amazing news!

Hanging out post-surgery

All the doctors and nurses had been trying to temper my expectations by saying Benton would likely be intubated from at least two days and up to a week post-surgery, but our little fighter was having none of that.  It was such a relief to see him extubated post-surgery, as there was always a part of me that was terrified that he would just relapse and stay intubated for quite some time.  We couldn't be prouder of our amazing man!!!

Now we are just waiting for Benton to fully recover from surgery and begin making his way back down to High Flow of 2 liters and then try Low Flow oxygen.  The end is in sight and we can't wait to bring our little wonderbug home.  Thank you for all your love and prayers - they truly mean the world to us.