Waiting for Surgery

Actually hoping and praying for our son to be able to get into brain surgery as soon as possible felt strange to me, but I knew that he could not begin the healing process until we got it out of the way. They showed us the CT scans in the PICU right away it was obvious to us why the surgery was needed. An enormous horizontal crack through the forehead part of his skull running pretty much from one ear to the other. On his right side the skull had been crushed in a spot and pieces of the skull bone pushed inside. On the left side, the CT scan just showed the crack but this was the side that had been "scalped" (as Albert had explained) and plastic surgeons were going to try to repair the large area that had been removed to the skull. The surgeons had met with us and told us what they would do and that we were just waiting for a chance to get into surgery.

They had awoken Ian a couple of times and Ian had spoken to me. I was amazed to hear how much he knew. They asked if he knew his name: "Ian". They asked what his birthday was: "May 7th". They asked him if he knew where he was: "At the doctor's office and I'm really bad." One of the nurses told me they asked him if he was riding on a four wheeler and he had told her "No, a Ranger". What a blessing to be able to hear your little boys voice and that he knows something at a time like this! The odd thing was that they had not given him any pain medicine and every time he was asked if he had any pain he either said "No", "I feel fine", or "I feel normal". Though he did have some complaints about the IV's in his arm and hand and he really didn't like the neck brace. No pain? This didn't make any sense to me.

I began to feel more and more anxious about getting him to surgery. It was about 4:30 and the PICU nurse suspected that it wouldn't be until at least 7 that night. I had been praying in my heart since the phone call this morning that my boy would be okay and that all of this would just miraculously go away, but at this time I changed my prayers to a plead to get my sweet little boy into surgery right away. Within a few minutes, the phone rang and when the nurse got off, he announce we'd be going to surgery in 30 minutes. I am so thankful to the Lord for this tender mercy and the reminder that he is aware of us.