Post-surgery Update

Wyatt made it out of surgery in record time today. He was a good patient, stunned his surgical team, and wowed the anesthesiologists. 

{pre-op fun, rolling around and being silly}

He went back for surgery around 7:45, procedure officially began at 8:15, and he was out by 11:15. Not too shabby, since they blocked off 6 hours for it all. 

His scopes went well, and pulmonology commented that things looked way better than they expected when they got into his lungs. His airway looked good, his adenoids looked huge, his tonsils looked good, and his lungs looked good. ENT made a game time decision and decided since his tonsils looked good on examination and on scopes, he would keep them intact. The biggest factor for this was recovery and since he hadn’t had any issues, we chose the conservative route. 

His hearing test didn’t go as we had hoped (even though we secretly knew..) and it came back as moderate hearing loss. The good news is they did the molds for hearing aids, since that can be difficult to do when awake. We will speak with the audiologist soon to develop the plan, but ENT felt confident in saying that the hearing aid we have wasn’t sufficient (we knew this also) and traditional over the ear aids would be appropriate. This kid is going to be a bionic kid soon— hearing aids, boots, feeding tube. 

Urology did their procedure and it went well, too. 

He transitioned from the OR to the PICU in order to recover, as we know he doesn’t recover well and the team wanted to be sure we could work on BiPAP settings and wanted to be sure he continued breathing well following all the tubes and scopes. 

{first few minutes post-op in the PICU}

He was quickly weaned off oxygen and is breathing room air currently. Even asleep. As in, no desats. This. Is. Huge. 

We had some snuggles and nap, and he even opened his eyes for a few minutes. No laughs or smiles, but I suspect we all may feel a little gross following surgery. 

He’s now resting comfortably, even in between pokes and prods from the nurse. He’s been having some bradycardia episodes (low heart rate) but the team isn’t concerned yet, as it’s somewhat common following anesthesia. We will monitor overnight and consult again in the am. 

Tonight they are dropping down his BiPAP settings to a much more normal rate, as he was previously on settings for a grown man. The hope is we can get the settings down, maintain sats at home, and then do a repeat sleep study to see if we can reduce even more. 

We thank you for your continued prayers. This guy has a whole army of people rooting for him and we are so very thankful. 

Here’s to a restful (alarm free!) night for all of us.