Born in Seattle Continued : Luca's surgery update

We are HOME! We are thankful to be home. Luca and I (Katie) took naps as soon as we got home around 1 pm yesterday. We all slept very well last night too. Luca's is not in pain and he is learning to make his way around the house using his wheel chair and scooting on his bottom.

We had a special visit from Jamie, Maya and Anya this morning. Thankfully my parents took Juliette this morning. She is proving to be a challenging dynamic as we get out feet under ourselves so to speak. She wants to get into "her wheel chair" or "push Luca" while he is in his wheel chair. She is also sweet and cheered us all up, but grateful Popeye and Nana are close by right now!

Here is a little summary of our stay at the hospital and surgery:

We arrived at the hospital Tuesday at 6:15 am. Luca was a champ getting up early and was in good spirits. About a mile from our house he said, "I use to be scared of my surgery but not I am not scared anymore" This is a huge answer to prayer, and put us all at ease.

Once we got to the hospital, he followed the space themed follow decals to the re-op room. Got a tweetie bird gown and a warm blanket and watched Ella the Elephanton TV for a little while. The anesthesiologist was so great with him and she could not have been geared more for kids when she explained what would be happening. She related it all to being an astronaut since that is what Luca told her, he wants to be when he grows up.

While he was still awake I carried him back to the OR. "space station" He was calm and peaceful the whole time. He was fine with the mask being put on but then after about a min with the mask on, he got really upset and yelled, "take it off".That was hard for me to see. The Dr. assured me this was normal as his brain activates before going to sleep, I guess. They said he wouldn't remember it. Then John and I spoke with Dr. Mosca for a few mins. He seemed like a morning person, very perky and looked ready to go.

Luca got an epidural at the beginning of his surgery that was taken out Wed. am. John and I got to meet Brooke, my college roomate, who works at Children's while we were waiting for Luca to come out of surgery. She gave us a tour of the floor she works on and helped me feel calm while we waited. The surgery was done around 11:30 and we got to see Luca around 12:30. He came out surgery calmly (we heard from him) and he said he did not feel yucky afterwards.

Luca wanted the cast off right away. The cast was his major complain the first 24 hours but he was not in pain. The surgery sounds like it was pretty successful Luca did not have enough skin to stretch the foot as much as Dr. Mosca wanted so we have to come back in one or two weeks and he has to go back under general an. and will have his foot stretched and recasted. Luca did not have enough skin to get in the best position during the surgery on Tues. This may need to happen two more times total....so that is going to be long for us all to go through but hopefully the foot can get to a great position by the end. Hard to even think about how we are going to explain that to Luca...and we haven't yet but will get there.

Luca picked Seahawks colors wrapped on his cast. Green on the bottom, blue on top. Brooke stopped by again during her lunch break to cheer us up and see how we were doing. It was so nice to see her! Mari came by with a bag full of treasures and made a Hawaii party! Popeye came with whipped cream, M and M and balloons! He played Go Fish with Luca. As did Sabine and Ingrid and really cheered Luca up! Tia came too and thoughtfully got presents he could play with sitting down. So great to have visitors to cheer us up! At the hospital: Luca slept from about 10:30 pm to 5:45 am, soundly. He was really upset about his cast and being there so the hour before he fell asleep was a hard one. Then his epidural pump beeped for about 2 hours 11 pm to 1 am till they finally turned it off. It had not been working properly. Thankfully luca slept though all the noise and didn't wake up in a lot of pain. I was quite frustrated. He is now on oral pain meds and is doing fine. He really is impressing me with how well he is coping and he was happy Wed. morning at the hospital. We got his meds. and wheelchair around 12 pm and then got discharged.