Surgery Results

Roscoe's surgery went very smoothly. He went into the operating room around 4pm and the surgeon came out to speak with us around 6:45pm. The whole process took a little longer than expected because it took time to transition him from one surgeon (tracheostomy) to the other surgeon (gastrostomy).

After the surgeon spoke with us, we walked back down to Roscoe's room and saw him on the bed with his new accessories. This was the first time that I had ever seen Roscoe with nothing on his face. It wasn't the perfect way to get to see your son's face, but I drank it all in.

His breathing sounded very wheezy when we came into the room, so the nurse explained that it was air leaking out of his mouth, nose, and tracheostomy site while he healed. He didn't seem to notice since he was sedated and calm. He'll probably remain like this for the next few days as they wean him from the pain killers and continue to decrease his breathing support. A good sign was that when we walked into the room he was on pressure 7L/minute @ 100% oxygen and by the time he left he was almost back to average at 6L/minute @ 70% oxygen.

BEWARE that the pictures below make Roscoe look lots worse than he is, so they might not be the best to show to kids. Honestly the pictures below make him look dead, but it wasn't like that in person. Roscoe's eyes were slightly open because he was partially awake, and he even opened them fully for a second and looked at me. If these pictures look bad to you, just think about how you'd look if someone took pictures with a cheap cell phone in poor lighting less than an hour after you had two surgeries (which is how I got these). We'll have some much prettier pictures in the coming days.

His new gastronomy (feeding) tube is in his stomach ...

... and his trach tube is in his neck. Right now they are keeping him very still.

This shows a close-up of the gastronomy tube.

The tube part disconnects from the connector that's stitched into his belly,

so that later on when he's home we can disconnect it and let him move around.

This shows a close-up of the trach tube. The tube is stitched

to his neck for the first week to prevent him from possibly moving it.

After the surgeon inspects it, they will remove the stitches

and just use the strap to hold it into place.

Long-time readers of this blog may recognize the small gold heart that's on his belly in some of the pictures. It's a temperature sensor that they've used since he was first born. For an eye-opening comparison of how much he's grown since he was born, check out how big the same heart is in these early pictures below:

Those with observant eyes will notice that in the early pictures, the gold heart was even cut in half because the full heart was too big. What a difference God can make. Right now he's roughly 9 times the size he was when he was born. Thank you all for your earnest prayers.