Post Op Day 4

As Gary said earlier Landon slept much better last night which was a welcome break for all of us.  Unfortunately he was woken this morning to a finger poke for labs followed by going downstairs for xrays which he doesn't like at all.  We let him stay in the wagon to eat breakfast and then took him on a ride around the unit just to get out of the room for a few minutes.  Before we left for our little walk he kept saying "no pictures!" because that's what we told him xrays are.  Add another thing to the list of stuff he hates in the hospital.  Who can blame him?

Other than that the day was still emotional for him - medicines are still a challenge and he is wary of anyone coming in the room or touching him so he gets hyped up pretty quickly when unpleasant things are happening.  He took a good nap this afternoon though and his eating is improving little by little.  It sounds like there is some more drainage that needs to happen with his chest tubes so he'll probably have those at least a few more days according to the surgeon and doctors.  He continues to make progress in the right direction even if the steps are tiny some days. 

There was a while this afternoon where he was a little more himself and it was fun to hear him chat away about what he was eating, what was on the tv, etc.  Saying things like "elmo funny" or "elmo ride bicycle" are reminders that our funloving little boy is still in there.  The days are tough but we are glad to say that his surgery is behind us and as he moves forward in healing, we don't have another procedure looming ahead.  It's hard to say if he will ever need another surgery but if he does we hope it's a looong way down the road!

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Gary here.  I think the hardest part of this for me is when he asks to be held.  I want to scoop him up in my arms and fling him in the air like I do all the time.  This afternoon he woke up EXTREMELY upset from his nap.  He kept asking to be held and I'll could really do was hover over him and hug him on his bed because of the chest tubes.  Basically, cutting to the chase with our prayer requests now, pray for the drainage to finish and he can get the tubes out.  He also has an echo likely tomorrow, so pray that everything looks good on that too.