Gabe's Surgery

Wednesday was the day we had anticipated for a long time. Gabe was born with a problem where both of his kidneys weren't draining properly. We have known that he would probably need surgery since I was about 20 weeks pregnant with him. We went down to Primary Children's hospital at about 9:15 in the morning. His surgery was scheduled for 10:45-the last time he ate was at 6:45 a.m. When we got there we found out that his surgery was bumped back at least until 12:00. We got really nervous at that point, wondering how we were going to hold him off for two more hours when he was already fussy. He ended up falling asleep and woke up around 12-he did pretty good. It was about 12:25 when we had to hand our little guy over to the anesthesiologist and say goodbye to him. It was so hard knowing that he would have to go through surgery being so little. They weren't sure whether they were going to operate on both sides or just one so they did a test to see if they thought it was necessary to fix both sides. The OR nurse called us at about 1:15 and said they had decided that both sides needed to be fixed and that they were going to start the surgery. Gabe had already been under anesthetic for 1 hour and they hadn't even started yet!! The nurse updated us about every hour and Jameson and I sat in the waiting room with a handful of other nervous parents. I can't believe what a great hospital Primary Children's is. We were definitely thankful to have such a great place to go. After about 5 hours of surgery Dr. Cartwright FINALLY came out to tell us how it went. He said that all went well and that the left side's ureter (the side they debated operating on) was really twisted around the surrounding tissue. He said he'd never seen one like that before. They placed two stents in his back that will drain his urine for 7-10 days so his little ureters can heal. I finally got to go and see him but they would only let one of us go back to see him wake up so I went since I figured he'd be hungry. I didn't think that he'd look as bad as he did-his face was really swollen and had red marks all over it. I could still see where they had put the tape to tape his eyes shut. I could tell he was really sore but I got a chance to feed him right there-hooked up to machines and all. We stayed in the hospital for one night and are home now. He's sore and probably will be until his stents are removed but I'm thankful that everything went well and he's home! Thanks Mom and Dad and Larry and Kaye for watching our other kids while we were gone!

He loved the mobile they had in the hospital!!

He was ok as long as he had his mommy.

It has always been so easy to make Gabe smile even after such a traumatic experience. What a cutie!! Jaxon is pretty cute too!!