Well this post is LONG overdue!
Carter's surgery was on July 3. I dropped the big kids off with an amazing friend of ours who agreed to watch them all day so that Steve and I could be at the hospital together. Then I raced home to pick the boys up and head to the hospital. Carter was allowed to have apple juice until 8am and then nothing. He's pretty easy going when it comes to food, but when he reaches his breaking point he wails, "I'm howngry, Mama. I howngry!" and it's just pitiful. I was a bit worried. We arrived at the hospital and headed in and checked in at Day Surgery at about 10:15. They said it would be a few minutes. We read books and waited patiently.
At about 10:45 they called us back and got started taking Carter's vitals and doing all of the pre-op checking in. Hadn't thought about the fact that all of his wristbands (ID, allergy alert, etc) would need to go on his ankle!) My nerves, which had been near to panic mode for the past two days, were calm. Carter, thankfully, hadn't mentioned food. I let him play Angry Birds on my Nook and then I let him peruse the couple of children's books I have on there. Although Carter was pretty patient (I do have to say that he didn't care much for the hospital gown, though!), I started getting impatient as his scheduled surgery time arrived and passed without having seen either surgeon. Then we got to 12:30 and still waited. Then it was 1:00 and we waited. Carter hadn't had any food in 18 hours! Poor guy.
Thankfully right about 1:00 he got his loopy juice. And loopy he was!! EVERYTHING was FUNNY! He needed to go to the bathroom and Steve said he couldn't really even stand up. Oh my. He wasn't so loopy that he wasn't totally and completely to the very core of his being OFFENDED that the surgeon initialed his arm. He wanted that writing OFF. It was pretty funny.
Finally just before 1:30 they came to get him. He went without crying which in turn prevented me from crying. Right around 3:30 Dr. Black came to talk to us. He said that surgery went well and they feel like they got a really good correction. Hooray!! The attendant in the family waiting room said that it would be about 45 minutes before they'd come to get us. It was more like ten and they were calling for one of us (me) to go back to recovery.
Everyone told me what a trooper he had been and although I wasn't a bit surprised, it did make me both proud and a little sad. He was groggy and in a little pain, so they quickly ordered some more pain meds for him. Pretty soon he was awake enough to head up to his room, so we met up with Steve and made our way up to the 10th floor.
Carter got settled in pretty easily, although there were a few tears as he was moved from the gurney to his bed. The nurse was warm and welcoming and Carter was awake and smiling before Steve left for the evening.
Awake is kind of an understatement. I was sure that our boy would be drifting in and out all evening, but he was WIDE AWAKE. I had hoped he'd nap a bit since the nurse mentioned that you could see the fireworks from the 11th floor family lounge and I was secretly hoping that Carter would be awake and want to go up to see them. I needn't have worried. SEVERAL popsicles, applesauce, apple juice, and some milkshake later, he was still chugging along around 9pm when the nurse came in to check on us. She got me a wheelchair and we trucked off to the 11th floor, IV pole in tow.
Carter was wowed by all the fireworks and I was wowed by how blessed we were to have a child who would be going home in the morning. There were some truly sick kids watching the fireworks with us that evening and I said a prayer of thanksgiving for my healthy children and a prayer of peace and healing for the ones who were not. About halfway through the show Carter announced he wanted to go back to his room and sure enough, when we got there he said his tummy was sick and sick he was. I think it was just the being up and about for a good half hour that did it. He was never sick again. He did settle down and go to sleep, though, and I tried to do the same.
About 2am he woke up with some pain and I called the nurse to give him pain meds. She did and then he was wide awake again until around 5am when he zonked out for a couple of hours. Poor guy. I hadn't been sleeping all that well anyway, so watching Curious George during the darkest hours didn't bother me much. The fact that the hospital encourages you to snuggle in bed with your little one sweetened the deal.
We were both trying to have some breakfast when Carter figured out that he couldn't feed himself dry cheerios. He hadn't cried much the previous night, but oh did he mourn the loss of his independence. He howled and my heart just broke for him. Thankfully, it was short lived.
Soon enough we were headed home. Keeping that boy on bedrest for four days was nigh onto impossible. He has a strong will for adventure and little desire to lay in bed all day and watch movies with mom. It will serve him well later, I am sure! We did discover that strong pain meds hype him up like no man's business (after another round of "who's awake from 2-5?") and we were glad when he didn't need the pain meds any longer.
Right after that, we headed further south to the orthopedic surgeon's office. After an x-ray to check on the progress of his correction, the nurse cut away Carter's splint. I was under the very mistaken impression that there was an actual splint under all of the bandages. Not so much. JUST bandages - no wonder the surgeon urged us to ensure that he had "no accidents" while he had the splint on! 
