July 1st 2009: Pre-Op

Around 8am on July 1st Ryan got into his car, and Tate and I got in my car and we headed down to Salt Lake City. We had to be there for Tate's pre-op work no later than 1pm. I was a total ball of nerves driving down. My hands were all sweaty and my stomach was in knots. Tate fussed off and on like he usually does on these long car rides. We stopped in Fort Hall to get gas and to feed Tate... or tried to feed Tate... he really just wanted to play and get out of his seat--he couldn't care less about the food. But we had to get back on the road, so I threw him a biter biscuit and hoped it would work... but it didn't. Eventually he cried himself to sleep and we had a couple hours of quiet driving. On our way to the hospital we swung by the airport and picked up Grammy. Then it was racing to the hospital. We were about 20 minutes late but no one said anything about it. What a relief!
First stop was Same day surgery to meet w/ the nurse and surgeon. We met Tate's surgeon who's name was Kouretas. (I'm so proud of myself to NOW a month later be able to pronounce his name... I never could pronounce it while we were there so when people would ask who the surgeon was I always had to say "I don't know.... but I can kinda sorta maybe spell it correctly..." Its pronounced like.... COR-ET-US.) So anyway, we only met w/ them for a short few minutes to get our information about what time the surgery was the next day and all that. We were hoping for a morning surgery, but we were scheduled for 1:30 in the afternoon. It ended up being fine and probably actually better that way, if you ask me.
Next stop was the lab for blood work and a urine sample. The blood work was quick (but I won't say painless).... then they put a bag on him to collect the urine and we waited... and waited.... and waited.... and waited.... I nursed him two or three times and still nothing. We put his feet in warm running water... and nothing. About this time we had a visitor. Sister Colton (from our parents' ward back in MD was in town) stopped by to give us a thoughtful gift. It was coloring books and crayons, etc. to help distract us during the waiting hours of surgery. So sweet.
After an hour or more of waiting for Tate to pee we gave up and asked if we could go to the x-ray while we waited for him to pee. They said yes, so off we went to x-rays...

Tate was so happy and smiley as I got him ready for his xray.

But he was not too happy when they actually had to do the xray and we had to live the area.

Over the next week Tate grew to hate xrays more and more!! One morning in particular was especially difficult for him and me. (More details in later post).

After the xrays, we went back to the lab and tried his feet in the warm water again. It worked, he peed.... but only a tiny bit. I just wanted to show it to the lab people and have them say it wasn't enough so we'd keep waiting, but they said "you never know... it could be enough", so they pulled the bag off of him (side note: super painful!), it wasn't enough, I knew it wouldn't be... it wasn't even half of what they needed. So they bagged him again. And we decided to leave. None of us had eaten a single thing all day and by this time it was 4:30. We found a Chick-Fil-A and while we were eating I realized Tate had filled his "bag" and it was making him uncomfortable. After much talk of what we were going to do, we decided to head back to the hospital and give them the sample, let them take the bag off. (The other option was us taking it off ourselves and keeping the urine in a cup in the fridge.) After Tate finally got the urine sample thing done and over with we headed north to Bluffsdale where we were going to stay with our friends the Averys.

It was so nice to be at the Avery's. For one we hadn't seen them in a long time. For two it totally relaxed us and took our minds off of what was coming the next day. Shannon made us a nice dinner of lasanga and we sat around w/ her family and enjoyed a meal. It was fun to see how big all the kids had gotten and to watch their personalities. It reminded me a lot of my family when we were all their ages. So fun. We had a nice room to stay in and the boys got their good nights sleep, while I let my mind race a million miles a minute and didn't sleep one bit! Truly frustrating.

Here is our angel Shannon holding little man the night before his surgery. She was showing him pictures on her cell phone. And that's Tate's build a bear we made for him when we had to come down in May for his sedated echo. We put a beating heart in it, so its his "heart bear".