The operation.

Yesterday was Orrin’s hernia repair surgery.  Nathalia, a friend from church, came over in the morning to watch the kids for us.  We put a little patch on Orrin’s hand that would help numb it a bit, then went to the hospital bright and early.  Of course, they didn’t get around to doing anything with us for a couple hours, which we should just expect.  But Orrin was being all cute and happy the whole time, and we started talking with a nurse for quite a while.  Actually, I should say Brett started talking with her, as she didn’t speak very much English, so it was an all-German conversation. 

She found out we had five kids, and were from Utah, and she asked how long we were here for and so on.  I told Brett to tell her that he had been here for a mission for the Mormon church years ago, so he did.  Then she asked what made our church different, so we talked about The Book of Mormon, living prophets, a lay ministry, and some other things.  We also got to dispel her idea that Mormons practice polygamy.  It was really neat. 

Then they came in and gave him some stuff to make him get tired, and then they wheeled him upstairs and we said goodbye.  He was still all happy, just laying on the bed, waving his arms.  :)

They had Brett’s cell phone number, so we had some breakfast, Brett gave me a little tour of the parts of the hospital he knows (he comes to the hospital for work quite a lot), went to the roof and looked out over the city,

 

and walked around and talked.  We said it was too bad that it takes our son’s surgery to get us to have a date. 

When the surgery was done, we went up to the post-op recovery room and got to see him.  He was waking up, but he was kindof still sleepy still and had a hard time really waking up good, so after he cried for a while they gave him some medicine to sleep a bit more.  The doctor said the surgery had gone well, and his hernia had been large.  (I was quite relieved when she said that—because my big fear was of having them tell me that they had opened him up and not found any hernia.)

After that, Brett went home to take care of the other kids, and I stayed with Orrin for the rest of the afternoon.  The next time he woke up he was more with it, and he nursed well and was pretty happy actually.  He slept a lot.  They sent us home about 7:00.

When Talmage had his surgery, they ended up keeping us at the hospital overnight to monitor him because of some breathing difficulty he’d had when they took out the breathing tube, and it was one of the harder nights of my life.  He was sad and didn’t sleep much, therefore I didn’t sleep much, and I felt bad for the other patients around us who probably didn’t sleep much.  So I was a little worried about the night, but Orrin was awesome and did really well.  He was up for just a bit once, but he had a stuffy nose.  Then he went back to sleep and only woke up to eat.  He’s been really happy and smiley and good (his usual self) since. 

  

I’m so very very very grateful that everything went well and that our little boy seems to be feeling pretty well.