The Long & Winding Road

Happy Turkey Weekend,everyone! Hope you all have had lots of yummy food & good family time. We actually managed to have a Thanksgiving, quiet, but full of food and love and thankfulness.

So, Evan's surgery went well. The piece of cartridge in his hip socket was a bit more difficult to remove than they anticipated. They also said it was smooth and shaped like a Hershey's bar. The surgical team thought this was funny as cartridge is usually bumpy. Maybe Ev's been eating too much chocolate?!?

His recovery is slow. He threw up for the first 24 hours after surgery. We were staying in a hotel so this made things a bit, um, complicated. He couldn't keep pain meds down. The surgeon called in an anti-nausea patch for him. It worked eventually except one of the side effects is blurred vision, which Evan got. So getting him up & down to the bathroom was quite the ordeal.

We made it back home late Wednesday afternoon. Right now our days are filled with helping Evan get around and trying to catch some ZZZZ's. He is still not able to weight-bear on his left foot, as his hip is still really sore. We are using a combo of wheel chair/walker to get him around the house. The incision is about 5 inches long, in a crescent shape, and closed with STAPLES! These staples have to come out on Thursday. I'm not sure why the surgeon closed it that way, if that was the only way to do it or if he just didn't think about the fact that getting the staples out of Evan is going to be quite the ordeal. It's hard for Ev to be compliant for a blood draw, much less having 5 staples removed. I can say from personal experience that staples don't always come out painlessly. My plan is to e-mail the surgeon to ask him to call us in some numbing cream to put on the site, so that Evan won't feel them coming out. I also am going to ask him to have a back-up plan in case that doesn't work. (Laughing gas maybe??)

One interesting side note: the recovery nurse said that when Evan was coming to he started reading everyone's names off their badges. They seemed quite surprised by this. We think they may have been surprised that he could read. If so, we are glad to kill a stereotype for them. Yes, people with Down's can learn to read!

I am really longing for all this to be over, so Evan can get on with his senior year and life can get back to some sort of routine. Well, as routine as things ever get around here. At least with less trips out of town to the doc's. Thanks to everyone for their prayers. We definitely felt them! What would we do without God and without friends?

Comments

[Kilikina]

I am very glad Evan can read. My little cousin has downs, and is 9 and can write her name and is trying to learn to read, hopefully she'll pick up on it. (Ok, actually I think she's more like 11 now)

[Ellen]

I've been waiting for this report! I'm glad it went well (so far - the staple thing will be interesting).

(I'm in a new school this year and we have two young men with Down's Syndrome - it's so good to me to have a more diverse population to work with)

;-)

[Molly]

So glad to hear things have gone as well as they have so far. And encourage Evan for me, I was freaked about having my zillion or so staples removed when I had my C-section with Peter, but it was a breeze. I will pray his will be also.

Love to each of you.

[Pat Kirk]

This too shall pass. Evan sounds like quite a guy.