Pre-op went great!

Okay sorry it took me awhile to update the blog. Many of you already know that Dominic's pre-op went well. We stopped feeding Dominic the night before we went in just incase he was going to be sedated for the echo. Sick Kids told us that they would try not to...but to have him ready if we needed to sedate him. We bought Dominic a new Spiderman Cartoon (his first one) to bring to the hospital with us and got him excited to watch it during the echo. We left the house at about 5:30 that morning and stopped at Walmart to buy the DVD. We arrived at Sick Kids about 15 minutes late at a quarter to 8. First thing on the agenda was bloodwork. I tried to tell Dominic that he would be getting his blood taken before hand to prepare him...but I wasn't sure what he got out of it. When we sat in the chair he was sad and scared but held out his arm when they asked. He cried but sat still and let them to their job. They gave him two whole sheets of stickers afterwards for being a good boy.

Next was chest x-ray. He complained only a little but when I showed him the tube restraint and told him we would have to use that if he couldn't hold still....he did as he was asked with just a little wimpering. Next was the echo. They wanted to sedate him but I told them he had been good all day and he was excited to watch his movie. Unfortunatly 4A and 4B don't have DVD players. The nurse called down to 4D to see if they could have a volunteer bring one over...and thankfully they did. So Dominic layed with Daddy and watched Spiderman while the tech did the Echo. It took more then an hour as they weren't getting the pictures they wanted (not Dominic's fault)...something to do with the collaterals they coiled off during the cath. The amazing thing here is that in all this time Dominic never asked for anything to eat or drink. Dominic normally asks for food the minute he wakes up and continues to ask all day until he goes back down. He never asked once! We did feed him some arrowroot cookies and apple juice at about 10:30 when we saw that he did not need to be sedated.

After the echo we went downstairs to the second floor for a duplex scan. This is an ultrasound on his main arteries in his legs. They like to do this because of his age and the fact that he has had two previous surgeries and caths. They wanted to make sure that the vessels are not to damaged I guess. This took about an 45 minutes to an hour...way to long. We then got to pick up our lunch and head back upstairs. The next 3 or 4 hours were spent in that room talking to everyone about the upcoming surgery. The nurse, the surgical fellow, the surgeon (nice to see him again), the physiotherapist (she was Dominic's favourite as she brought bubbles. We also got to talk with Svetzlauna (sp?) , she does a lot of the research studies. She hadn't seen Dominic since he was about 14 months old. She couldn't believe how big he had gotten. There are always lots of studies going on with these single ventricle kids. We signed up for one and are looking into another. Anyway we left the hospital just before 5 and had almost a three hour ride home because of the traffic. Dominic feel asleep before we even left the parking garage and slept the whole way home. I can't blame him...it was such a long day and he was so good!

Anyway thanks for everyones thoughts and prayers...we could tell you were praying for us as the day could not have gone much better. So now we prepare for next week...lets hope and pray it goes just as well.

Jenaia