The Mock Dock

So, any of you out there who are squeamish about women’s reproductive organs may want to skip this post.  Likewise, those of you who are squeamish about bodily functions in general might choose to pass this one too.

Ok.  For those of you still with me – I would like you to know that I just now finished a bottle of magnesium citrate, in preparation for tomorrow’s uterus-removal.

I’ve never drank magnesium citrate before, and now that I have, I hope I never ever have to again.  You know what it tastes like?  It tastes like the straight syrup of sprite, mixed with a bunch of salt, and then carbonated.  It’s heinous.

And so now I’m sitting around, waiting for the onset of major diarrhea.  Good times.

I just hope this all passes (no pun intended) in time for the Golden Globes.  I’d just as soon watch them uninterrupted, if you know what I mean.

In other news, Mini-Mock has a wicked ear infection, and is all sorts of sick.  He’s pitiful and unable to sleep and doesn’t have an appetite and is just the saddest, sweetest little sick person you could ever know.  Junior Mock?  Totally fine.  But NO ONE in this house slept last night.  It was as if it never WAS night, and yesterday just sort of lasted through, well, right now.

I wish I could totally fast forward time to about 2-3 weeks from now, when I’m all recovered and Junior Mock is completely healed 100% and Mini-Mock is over his sickness.

Anyway – I might try to post a little during the Globes, if I’m not spending the entire evening attached to my toilet.  If I don’t post, you’ll know why. 

Wish me luck tomorrow!

The nurse just came into the waiting room, and said, “Surgery began at 9:26am.” I’d just like to point out that that was precisely four minutes AHEAD of schedule. This morning’s experience (so far) at the hospital has been the least annoying hospital experience in recent memory. I got a message last night from someone who wanted to “pre-register” Junior Mock for surgery. I didn’t return the call, because it was after hours, and honestly anytime he’s been pre-registered, I end up answering all the same questions approximately 28 more times at Actual Registration anyway. So I was worried, coming in this morning, that registration was going to be a nightmare because he wasn’t pre-registered.

I don’t understand the concept of pre-registering, anyway. What’s wrong with just plain old registering?

Surgery is expected to take about an hour. They’re going to make slices behind each knee and on either side of his groin, and then they’re going to snip those tendons/muscles and elongate him, and then they’re going to put him in knee immobilizers for recovery. They’re also going to inject a whole bunch of botox in his biceps and his shoulder muscles.

I am hoping hoping hoping they won’t want to keep him overnight; they say it all depends on how he’s managing the pain. So I should know more in a few hours!

Say some prayers for my big monkey-boy this morning if you have a chance.

I don’t think I’ve told you guys that Junior Mock is having surgery again! This time, it’s not cutting any bone, which automatically means that it’s not quite as horrific, but it’s surgery and cutting nonetheless, which means it’ll suck.

On the 7th, he’ll be having his hamstrings cut (right behind his knees) and his hip adductors snipped as well. He’s unable to straighten his legs because of how impossibly tight those muscles are. This will be a permanent fix, so he’ll no longer have botox injections in his legs. During the surgery, they WILL put botox in his armpits and inner elbows, because those appear to be the new spots that his spasticity is really out of control. It’s become hard to get shirts on and off of him because of it, so hopefully this will provide some relief. For all of us. Despite how serious all that sounds, he will only have to stay in the hospital overnight!

Here’s a pic of him taken on Christmas eve. Isn’t he like, the most handsome almost 13-year old you’ve ever seen?

And now, for the TMI part. On the 18th, I’m getting my uterus taken out!!! Recovery is going to suck – because even though it’s laparascopic there are three incisions involved. Listen how cool this is – they put a camera into the incision near my belly button, and then they slice a line on either side my pelvis near where my uterus is. And in one slice goes a vacuum thingy, and in the other slice goes like a microscopic machete – which goes in and cuts my uterus away from the ovaries and cervix, and then chops it up in a million pieces so that the vacuum thingy can suck it out. HOW COOL IS THAT???

Apparently, I have fibroids, and so my doc said I should just have the whole thing taken out. Which I am TOTALLY cool with, since it means I will never have periods ever ever ever again. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!

There is a guy I work with who is completely freaked out by any HINT of talk of female reproductive organs. I mean, he just wigs out. So you can imagine my glee at informing him about my upcoming surgery. Every time I see him, I try to think of ways I can talk about it. If he says something about the weather, for example, I say, “Yeah – it’s crappy out. Hopefully it won’t be crappy when I HAVE MY UTERUS REMOVED.” And he just shudders and runs away. I love this.

Anyway, it’s going to be a very surgical January. I shall keep you apprised of how it all turns out, since I know it’ll be ALL YOU CAN THINK ABOUT.

An alert and astute mockdocker sent me this photo today and all I can think of when I look at it is how sorry I feel for those cats.   Look at how FURIOUS they both look.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen madder cats EVER.

Totally off topic, and totally inappropriate to talk about within the context of naked people holding cats, but I thought you guys might be interested to know that Junior Mock had his post-surgery follow up appointment this afternoon, and he’s doing totally awesome!  He was like a totally different boy than they remembered from his previous visit.  Last time, he looked a lot like those mad cats – only he was a lot louder.  And today? He was all giggles and smiles and gleeful squeals.

My boy is 100% back.  YAY!

WARNING:  This post is not for the squeamish.  So there’s your disclaimer.

Yesterday, Junior Mock’s best friend and caregiver took him for his first post-surgery physical therapy session.  Thursday night, he’d had a bad night, which was his first in a few days.  But, as usual, since he can’t talk, we were left to wonder what in the heck was bothering him.  At therapy, we found out the answer.

The therapist found a small, sharp plastic protrusion sticking out of his back.  Yeah.  The lower third of his scar still has some scabbed over parts – where it’s not totally healed, and apparently that’s pretty normal.  What’s NOT normal is to have anything STICKING OUT OF IT.  The odd thing was that he wasn’t bleeding or anything like that.  He just had a piece of unidentified plastic trying to come out of his back.

So after several frantic phone calls back to the therapist, to Junior Mock’s caregiver, and the doctor’s office, we were finally told that he should be seen by the doc. 

Junior Mock’s caregiver raced him over to the doc’s office, and the PA who saw him told her that it looked like a piece of the drain that they removed a few days after surgery had gotten caught on some of internal sutures during the removal, and was left behind.  And before  Junior Mock’s caregiver could even start worrying about them having to put Junior Mock under anesthesia again, the PA had grabbed a pair of tweezers and started to pull the drain out.

Turns out – it wasn’t just a small piece.  It was freaking EIGHT INCHES LONG.  Junior Mock’s caregiver nearly hurled.  And there was all sorts of bleeding once the drain was all the way out.  But Junior Mock?  He just smiled throughout the whole ordeal.  There was plastic tubing being pulled out of his body, his caregiver was about to throw up on him, and he just smiled.

That’s my boy.

Anyway, he’s now bandaged up again and hopefully doesn’t have any more surgical material hanging out inside of him waiting to make a dramatic exit.  He had some trouble getting to sleep last night, but once he got a little tylenol, he slept from around 11pm till 6.30 this morning.  YAY!

Seeing this picture of what is clearly a mother monkey doing Baby ‘N Me Yoga, reminded me of how much I miss doing yoga myself.  I can no longer do it, because I have the dumbest affliction ever – an ulnar impaction.

And I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking – “Mock – that isn’t even a real affliction.  You are just making that up to get out of yoga.”  But it really is real!  Basically it means that my ulna is a few millimeters too long, which results in all sorts of damage to the surrounding cartilage whenever I bear weight on my wrists.  Which, if you have ever done a downward dog, you realize happens a lot in yoga.

I discovered this wrist issue when I started inexplicably having pain in it several years ago.  At that time, when I was first diagnosed, I was given a huge full-arm splint to wear to heal my wrist.  Henceforth I was known as RoboCop by people at work (thanks to Bunny).  But when the splinting didn’t work, I got a cortisone shot. 

Here’s the thing about cortisone shots in your wrist that doctors neglect to tell you.  After about 45 minutes when the numbing medication wears off?  It’s sheer AGONY.  Some people (and naturally I fall into this category) experience crystallization of the cortisone, which can be extremely painful for several days.  It’s actually way worse than the original pain you’re trying to treat.  BUT, the upside is that after the excruciating cortisone shot pain wears off, you’re pretty much golden.

Happily, I seem to need one of those shots only once every 3 years or so.  But I am not allowed to do things that would cause undue stress on my wrist, and so therefore I can’t do yoga.  I hate this.

The only way to fix an ulnar impaction is surgery – which is super invasive and bone-cutting and not at all fun.  I was actually scheduled to get it, but then my surgeon ended up talking me out of it, saying, “If the shots work for you, and you only have pain when you bear weight on your wrists, then how about you just don’t bear weight on your wrists?”  And I said, “But what about yoga?” and he said, “Being able to do yoga seems like a pretty lame reason to do a major surgery, particularly when I would recommend you not bear weight on your wrists after surgery either.”

So there you have it.  I can’t do yoga, because one of my stupid ulnas decided to be too long.  Leave it to me to have misbehaving ulnas.

Anyone out there have a weirder affliction than uneven ulnas?  Let’s share.

So it’s 7pm and Junior Mock still hasn’t been forced to sit up yet.  I’m glad, because of course I’m dreading it, but I’m also anxious for them to just get it over with already.

He’s been pretty restful today, but pretty much when he’s awake, he’s miserable.  I am trying to stay on top of the nurses to make sure they move his position frequently.  Earlier today, he was crying and couldn’t be consoled with any medication whatsoever.  We were all scratching our heads and worried about why he was still in pain when he’d already been given valium, morphine, and lortab.  I asked that he be gently rolled over onto his other side, and when we got him shifted, it turned out that his catheter tube had been digging into his thigh, and had left a horrible red indentation.  He fell asleep almost instantly after it was moved away. 

This is what makes having a non-communicative boy the hardest.  And it’s not even that he’s non-verbal – it’s that he has no use of his arms/hands.  So, not being able to move a tube out from underneath himself is one thing, but even in every day life, I often wonder if he ever has itches he can’t scratch, or tickles in his nose he can’t rub out.  It’s those little things, that you and I don’t even think about most of the time because instincts take over.  But it’s those little things that I wonder about FOR Junior Mock.  And like today, sometimes I just have to figure them out as I go.

Sleeping comfortably now and so handsome.  I’m hoping for a peaceful night for him after they try sitting him up.

Junior Mock had a restful night, for the most part, which is good.  He needed a third blood transfusion and finally his hemoglobin counts are back up.  He’s been crying quite a bit this morning, and of course the deep breaths and sobby chokes make the pain worse, which I can’t explain to him, and so he cries harder.  They’ve got him on quite a cocktail of drugs at the moment to keep him relaxed, and he finally fell asleep again a few minutes ago.

They are hoping to take out his arterial line today, as well as one of the IV’s.  They’ll keep one IV in him for meds, but are going to start him back on his formula at noon today instead of just IV fluids.  There is talk/hope that he might move out of ICU today.

The big event of the day will be when they try to move him into his wheelchair for about 5-10 minutes.  That is going to be excruciating for him to go through, as well as for me to watch.  Am soooooooo nervous about that.

Still no sign of any smiles, so I just keep looking at the picture of him in his wire hat.  Maybe he’ll perk up a bit tomorrow!

Hangin’ in there…

Between the support Junior Mock has received from you all, to his friends and family here, I am simply blown away by how much love there is pouring out to my special boy.

Mr. Mock, Daisy, and Junior Mock’s best friend and caregiver were with me in Junior Mock’s room in ICU a few hours ago, when a nurse popped her head in and started scoping out the room, as if she were looking for something.  Finally she looked up and said, “I’m just trying to see where we can fit all of these.”  And then she walks forward and shows us the GINORMOUS BALLOON BOUQUET pictured above.  At first I thought that they were all being distributed to the entire children’s hospital, but you guys, they were ALL FOR JUNIOR MOCK.  His school bus driver and bus aide got them for him.  Can you believe that????  I’m hoping that once Junior Mock feels a little better in a couple of days, he’ll be able to see them and then after he’s had a chance to appreciate them, we’ll start passing them out to the rest of the kids on the floor.  The nurse said there has never been a delivery of balloons so big for any kid ever!

It’s been a rough afternoon.  He needed a 2nd blood transfusion and his temp rose to 103.3.  He can’t seem to get comfortable and his breathing pattern is really erratic right now, making it hard for him to get any sleep.  Tomorrow, they want to try to get him into his wheelchair two times!  I’m so nervous – I know it’s going to be so painful – but it’s for his own good to try and get his lungs cleared out and prevent pneumonia from settling in.  But I’m dreading it. 

So far the staff at the hospital has been great.  I’m going to try and look at some entertaining stuff online for a bit and who knows, perhaps I’ll even mock something.  Even though Junior Mock is having a tough go of it right now, it makes a huge difference knowing how much love is being aimed in his direction.

Thanks, you guys.

I’m happy to report that Junior Mock’s surgery was a success!  The doctor said he did really well, only needed one blood transfusion, and that his spine straightened out really nicely.  That’s all the good news.

The bad news is that he’s obviously in a lot of pain and terribly uncomfortable.  He’s on meds, of course, but we’ve already been prepared for the fact that the next couple of days are going to be really rough.  It’s just really hard to watch your kid be in pain and be helpless to do anything about it.  The pain will mostly be caused by muscle spasms – since all of his back muscles have been moved around and they’re now all angry about being moved around, and to retaliate, they seize up and make everything really owie.

Harder still, is the fact that he can’t TELL me how he’s feeling.  It’s all a guessing game.  He is still very groggy, but it seems like he’s getting little bits of rest here and there.

A long road ahead.  I wish I had a life-fast-forward button so that I could make it automatically like 6 weeks from now.

Sigh.