Post-op

Tomorrow is Tyler's post-op appointment at Seattle Children's Hospital.  It was originally going to be January 19th, last Thursday, but we rescheduled because of the winter storms going through Seattle.  I think Dr. White will be very happy with Tyler's recovery.  He has done so well!  I am anticipating a fast appointment, but I have questions about what restrictions Tyler might have going forward.  Dr. Song was always very reluctant to give Tyler any restrictions and only said that football and wrestling were off limits.  It makes me nervous to not have a more specific set of guidelines, so I hope I get those tomorrow.  I also want to know more about the upcoming surgeries.  Now that he has a VEPTR, I want to have a general outline of the surgery we will be doing this summer.

As for getting back to life, I went back to work early because Tyler was moving around so much like he did before the surgery.  He went back to school on Tuesday and had a great day.  Tyler brought his x-ray of the VEPTR to show his classmates, and they apparently thought it was pretty cool!  Everyone was excited to have him back to school.

Last week winter finally arrived in East Wenatchee and last Thursday night Tyler and Kaitlyn helped us shovel the driveway.  Tyler is really pretty much back to normal and it is such a blessing.  I mean, I just didn't know what to expect.  I read stories and searched websites for anything that would give me an idea of how he would recover, and what he has done has surpassed our expectations.  I really was excited to bring Tyler in for his post-op last Thursday because I wanted the doctors to see how well he had recovered in such a short period of time!  He has returned to his feisty, active self and has not even needed more than a dose of Tylenol or Ibuprofen once a day.  He has even had a few days that he has not needed any medicine at all!  Yesterday school was cancelled because freezing rain coated the streets.  Fortunately, the day turned into a beautiful and sunny day and the kids and I spent the afternoon building a snow fort in the backyard.  Actually, I built most of it while Tyler supervised and Kaitlyn buried her dinosaur in the snow.  We had a great time and I felt like we had really returned to normal.  I know we won't always have that feeling and we will have to adjust our "normal" to include surgery every 6 months, but if this experience is is any indication of what is to come I think Tyler will fly through those recoveries as well.