Last Wednesday - Surgery Day

I may blog the end of last week in 1-week-delay-real-time. Here's last Wednesday to start (in ridiculous detail):

Wednesday started with Dominic waking up a little earlier than usual for a breastfeed at 5.25. He then when straight back to sleep and Debbie and I woke up properly before Dominic, and both moving about at normal adult volume with no regard for whether we woke the little guy up. It was about 5.40am and because of his afternoon surgery we were under strict instructions to give him no solid food after 6am, and no breastmilk after 8am. We knew that if he didn’t wake up before 6am he wouldn’t get to eat anything all day.

He did stir at about 5.45 and was quickly whisked off to the lounge to have a bit of toast with marmite while mum packed the last of the toiletries. Despite being up almost 2 hours before we had to be in the car it still felt like a flying start to the day as we packed last items, checked what we had, got Dom changed and fed and ready for the trip and loaded up the car. We were on the road by 7.40am and had a relatively smooth drive down, though we did hit traffic once we reached the Ngauranga Gorge.

Half way down to Wellington I realised that I’d forgotten to put the two carefully packed bags of toys and books in the car. Cursing my gooberdom we arranged to phone Debbie’s mum and get her sister and brother in law to stop in and collect the books on their way down.

Anyone who has been to Wellington Hospital recently will know that there is a lot of construction going on. Debbie and I were not aware of this fact and blithely drove into the usual entrance (after missing it due to lane-merging issues and having to pull a U-turn and double back). It wouldn’t have been too insurmountable an obstacle if it hadn’t been for the fact that tired, hungry Dominic had been miserable for the last 15 minutes of the car ride and had been crying louder and longer than he has in recent memory (Dominic isn’t much of a crier, so 15 minutes is a big, big deal for us).

Debbie alighted with Dominic and I went in search of a park, only to find that all accessible parks were now ‘outpatient only’. I parked the car in one anyway and ran up to meet Debbie at the children’s ward so we could check in – pretty much exactly on time at 9am.

We entered the bustling children’s ward, went to the front desk and announced our presence. The helpful desk person repeated Dominic’s name, smiled and asked us to wait in the interview room for a nurse. The interview room is a small room at the end of a corridor with a few chairs, a few toys and books, and an oddly sharp-edged low coffee table. Dominic had been in the car for over an hour and was keen to rampage about so we let him crawl, grab and chew (after wiping a few toys with baby-wipes). I asked the staff at the front desk if there’d be time for me to move the car (I didn’t want to get a ticket if possible) and they said it’d probably be OK. I dashed out, drove out of the new exit and was informed that the old exit was now both an entrance and exit, accessible from the imaginatively named ‘Hospital Street’. I zoomed up the hill, parked, grabbed a bag from the boot and raced back to the interview room.

Debbie was still waiting. Dom was still crawling, chewing, and talking. We waited another half and hour, then decided to go check to see how long it would be. It turns out nobody knew we were there so we would have waited until we died of malnutrition or boredom it seems if we hadn’t gone and asked.

Within 5 minutes a very helpful nurse arrived, weighed Dom (9.43kg), measured him (81.5cm long) and measured his head circumference (48.5cm). His oxygen saturation level was a healthy 100%. We were shown where our room was (room 9) and asked a bunch of health-related questions. The room was not dissimilar to the maternity ward ones, with curtains to section it off into 4 areas if needed. There were already two infants in the room along with their associated adults. Dom was to be youngster number 3.

The registrar appeared a little after 10am to take a look at Dom. He was getting pretty tired and hungry by this stage so was not hugely impressed with efforts to get him to sit still while someone pressed a stethoscope to his chest and back and prodded him in the abdomen. The check took about 10 minutes and then we were informed that we should expect visits from Mr Pringle (the specialist/surgeon) and an anaesthetist. No time more specific than ‘the afternoon’ was given for the surgery but they made sure to let us know we weren’t to give Dom any food or liquid other than water.

We briefly attempted to get Dominic settled in the room, hoping that he might agree to have a nap. He was all kinds of tired but refused to sleep – he was very hungry and in a strange place after all. So plan B was to take him down to the play area and keep him (and us) distracted for a few hours.

A few hours is a long, long time for a hungry, tired baby and two tired, stressed parents. We played with a variety of toys, crawled through a tunnel which was quite big for a Dom but a tight fit for his parents, and generally romped about. Dom was very cheerful in the face of it all – as long as we didn’t expect him to sleep he was OK.

After an hour or so we were visited by Mr Pringle who chatted to us for a minute then drew on Dominic with a marker pen so there’d be no doubt during surgery about which lung they were supposed to operate on. Dom found this rather amusing and was happy to oblige – a distinct improvement on his reaction to the stethoscope!



We trudged back down to the play area once again and tapped our feet some more. Shortly after that the anaesthetist came and saw us. He asked us a bunch of medical history questions then proceeded to freak us out with all the things that could go wrong. I know ‘informed consent’ means we need to hear this stuff, but popping Dom’s lungs from putting in a line in his neck, breaking his teeth with the breathing tube, and killing him? That sounds a little OTT to me. He left us feeling rather nervous about the whole thing.

At lunchtime we were warned that police dogs were on the way! A number of police officers arrived along with two police dogs – a retired canine and a 2-year-old dog which was incredibly full of beans. With them was ‘the big dog’, a police officer in an awesome dog costume. His eyes were peeping out of the mouth-hole of a huge Alsatian head, his front and back were draped in fake-fur, and he had fluffy arms. Under that he was wearing a regular police uniform.

Dom met the retired police dog (Blade) first. Blade was wearing a santa hat and was very calm and collected. Dom was hesitant for about half a second then started squealing with delight and wanted to pat the dog. Blade was very obliging and Dom chuckled away as he touched the doggy’s fur.

Then he met the Big Dog. He was a little more hesitant, until the Big Dog asked us what Dom’s name was. As soon as the huge costumed head said his name Dom burst into giggles and was smitten. The third dog was equally fun – a bouncy young chap who was super-keen on sniffing and licking everybody and everything in the ward. Dominic’s feet got licked which caused great delight, as did having his hand licked.

It was a pretty exciting visit all in all and Dom thoroughly enjoyed it.

A little while later Mr Pringle’s understudy, a rather hunky young doctor, stopped in to introduce himself. He was very polite and chatted to us about the procedure, checked to see if we had any questions. I was slightly tempted to ask him whether he’d ever been called McDreamy by a patient, and was also tempted to ask whether he was a med student or a specialist in training, but I didn’t ask either. He told us that they were doing Dom’s operation second in the afternoon, after another operation that had a 19 in 20 chance of being relatively smooth and quick.

We changed Dom into his surgical scrubs outfit, and about then the fire alarm started to ring. Oddly I’d been wondering how much of a delay a fire alarm would cause. The fire marshal came through to inspect the alarms and stuff and said that it was only a drill we didn’t have to go stand outside, which was nice for all the little kids plugged into drips and machines and stuff. We were told that Dom’s operation was now scheduled for 2pm.

Dom finally succumbed to exhaustion at about 1.40pm, falling asleep whilst being carried around in his surgical outfit. He slept happily on Debbie for a while, and when 2pm rolled around I went to the desk and asked when we were moving up to surgery. The answer? “Right now.” Which is about 10 – 15 minutes away in hospital time.

Debbie, Dom, a nurse and I all walked to the lifts then waited 10 minutes as a number of lifts descended past us, then skipped our floor on the way back up. Eventually we got in a lift going down, went to the basement, then rode back up to the surgical floor (6?). There’s a kind of waiting room next to the operating theatres, and we stood around in there and answered a number of health questions, twice for two different nurses. Time ticked away slowly. People wandered in and out. There was a mix-up where someone had been waiting in a ward for more than 20 minutes for an orderly to bring them up, but none of the orderlies knew anything about it. That person arrived 45 minutes after the surgical nurse rang to get them brought up.

Debbie had decided that if Dominic was awake she’d carry him into theatre, to keep him settled. He did wake up after about 25 minutes in the waiting room, so Debbie was given a big white jumpsuit, hairnet thing, and paper shoe-covers to put on. Dominic wasn’t particularly happy (probably very hungry and still tired after only a 40 minute sleep), but we played peekaboo with him to keep him entertained, and he thought Debbie’s crazy outfit was pretty funny.

Finally the team was ready and Debbie carried Dominic into the theatre. Along the way a number of medical professionals in full surgical gowns and masks made cooing noises at the cute little baby wandering past their operating rooms.

In the operating room there was a big team – something like 10 people. There were also posters on the wall like you get in a GP’s office – parts of the eye, your amazing body, bones of the arm etc. Debbie found this a bit odd (and worrying) as the only people who are conscious in the room should be pretty familiar with that anatomy stuff, right?

She put Dom down and he wriggled and tried to fight the mask, but a couple of breaths of the anaesthetic and he was out like a light. Debbie had been fine, but when she went to leave the room her legs were quite shaky. She came back into the waiting room, I helped her off with the overalls and stuff, and we asked the nurse how long the operation would be. “More than 2 hours” was the answer, so we wandered out into the hospital feeling oddly stressed out and relieved at the same time. Stressed out that Dom was having an operation, but no longer having to carry him and try to keep him jolly in the face of no food and little sleep and fret about his emotional state.

We left our cellphone number with the ward and the surgical nurse and decided to go for a walk.

- Walk to Baby Star. Eat at café we went to after Dom was born.
- Call from my mum, Debbie’s mum, walk to Newtown, get McDs.
- $2 shop supplies, walk back (5pm), still no word.
- Wait and wait. 6pm no word.
- 7.30pm Debbie up to recovery room. Dom asleep but slowly stirring.
- 8.05pm Matt up to recovery. Nearly faints 5 minutes after arriving. Sits down. Nearly faints again. Recovery staff spend more time looking after Matt than Dom.
- Dom with multiple tubes into and out of his person. Slowly wakes up at around 8.20pm. Has a breast feed. Groggy and a bit upset.
- C-section babies arrive in recovery room – twin boys!
- Wait for orderly for ages. Finally wheelchair arrives. Matt rides wheelchair (not allowed to walk after fainting) while Debbie and Dom ride bed.
- Down to ward around 9pm, transfer Dom from bed to cot. Lots of tubes. Machines go beep. Another breast feed. Mum and dad take off shoes, eat toast.



Obviously there's a lot of detail left out at the end there. I may expand those bullet points, but I may not. I think you still get the idea :-)