We left home about 10:40 am to head to Iowa City and the compound of University of Iowa Hospital. Today is/was the day when Caleb was to have a good number of his rocks yanked from their home in his gums so that the wounds can heal in time for his jaw repair surgery in November.
"How did he do?", you ask?
Thanks for asking!
He did great from our perspective.
He was allowed a piece of toast in the morning and 1 cup of "clear" liquids up to 2 hours prior to his surgery.
Those of you who know Calebber McCheese, know about his his rocking on the couch and essentially chanting in rhythm to the rocking, "Mah hungry. No patience! Mah hungry. No patience!".
The boy was hungry prior to surgery but I think it was probably nerves that kept him from going crazy about it. He asked me last night when I was tucking he and Robby in bed, "Why pull teeth?", while making the motion of someone pulling his precious teeth from his mouth.
Let me tell you... it's a hard thing to explain to a Chinese kid with broken English, who has been in America for only a little over a year and a half, with people that he had not met before then, that we are doing this so that SOMEDAY DOWN THE ROAD, he'll be happy that it's done. That it's best IN THE LONG RUN that it's done now for the "man tooth" to seat itself into strong bone.
Oh sure, he agrees with it and pretends to understand but the look on his face tells the truer story that he thinks it's all a big steaming pile of male bovine excrement!
I seem to have lost the point...
He was in a generally good mood all the way to Iowa City, and even took a brief nap on the way. He was doing pretty good in the waiting room and even doing good when they called us all back into the room with "the big chair" where the surgery was going to be done.
They gave him a bit of "loopy juice" to keep him calm and he fought it as hard as he could but was still good.
He didn't do quite as good when the first nurse tried to put the needle in his arm and the vein moved. She tried for a bit, unsuccessfully to get it in the vein, but it would not go. Caleb was trying desperately to watch the proceedings with Momma and a few nurses trying to distract him.
Eventually it became too much and the small tears in his eyes morphed into a full-on wail as they had to move the needle around a bit.
The second nurse came in and found the vein fairly quickly, and little Calebber settled down a bit.
They gave him some additional meds thru IV to knock him out and we said our temporary goodbyes to him and left the room. I don't think he cared!
We were called into recovery about 50 minutes later and the boy was doing pretty good. The nurse asked if he wanted Mom or Dad to sit with him and he grabbed my hand so she lifted him up, allowing me to sit down and put him down on my lap.
During that time he would go from being somewhat aloof to being highly interested in the hanging medicine for his IV drip. Occasionally the blood pressure velcro thingy around his arm would tighten and give the appropriate scrub monsters more data and he would stare at it with a grand focus.
So we sat there in recovery for roughly 20 minutes talking about football, picking out toys and just generally wasting time until it was time for the boy to be released.
Upon his release, Robby got to push him in a wheel chair out to the elevator where he got up on his rubber legs and proceeded to stumble his way along feeling ornery as crap as momma tried to hold his hand and stabilize him.
So we're in the car for about 3 seconds when Caleb's head comes peeping into the front seat looking for food and drink. He declares in intervals of about 15 seconds that he is hungry and thirsty! We'd get him settled down a little bit and then, "Mom! Ma? Ma? MA? Mah hungry and thirsty.".
It got to be funny, sad and maddening all at once.
As fate would have it, there was a something bad going on the interstate around the exits for Victor, Iowa. We came to a complete standstill and I was forced to drive on the shoulder until the next exit and we went county roads and dirt roads the rest of the way home.
Thankfully, in more ways than one, Caleb fell asleep at some point and we made it safely home within about 25 minutes of when we would have if we had taken the interstate the entire distance. As it turns out, there was a semi that had been pulled out of the ditch on the West bound lanes where somebody was gathering stuff out of on our way to Iowa City.
We saw on the news later that they were attempting to get that semi removed from the side of the insterstate and another semi crested the hill, couldn't stop and a big, nasty, firery crash ensued. I was glad we went back roads since the interstate didn't reopen until we were nearly home! YIKES!
So how is Caleb doing tonight?
Pretty good, again, thanks for asking!
Here is a picture of the lad, with his swollen lip that prevents you from seeing any area of pulled teeth.
I made the boys some noodles that were boiled in chicken broth and they ate all of them in near record time!
So far, so good.
Hopefully, tomorrow will bring good results as well since we have breakfast and supper planned.
Prayers welcomed!
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