Now....We Wait!

We arrived back home last night around 11:30pm to the beckoning of our beds. Whew! how I missed my Select Comfort mattress! As with all of our NYC trips we have some interesting stories to tell. Many of them in the form of "God's little whispers". You know the moments when you just need Him and think you can't do it another minute, but then He lifts you up to new heights? We got a few of those blessings to encourage us. Oh yes, and thank goodness for Blackberry technology and Facebook, which allowed me to keep informing our many prayer warriors. Your prayers were certainly felt. So this will be long, but I want to start from the beginning. Pull up your chair and get your popcorn- Ha!

As I stated before we had decided to stay in Edgewater, NJ this time to help cut some of the costs of staying in Manhattan. The room was really nice and we could ride the ferry boat over to the island. The morning of surgery we did just that. We had some glorious weather for NYC. In fact, it was a record high of 92 on surgery day. The ferry ride over was so neat. The Manhattan skyline was neat to see from the river, and Ty thouroughly enjoyed himself. The whole ride on the ferry was around 10 minutes, but from the hotel to the hospital in took an hour to get there. Much longer of a commute than our usual Manhattan 7 minutes. Once we arrived at the hospital it was business as usual. We checked in, and prepared for our wait. It was 9:00am and surgery didn't start until 11:00am. Oh, and mother of the year here forgot Ty's Nintendo DS at the hotel. Luckily, I had some Bakugans in my purse and all was saved. We tossed the Bakugans back and forth for HOURS!!! Oh what kids never get tired of doing!!!!

Dr. Ritch was running a little behind so finally at 11:45am Ty went down for surgery. It is really neat in NYC because the parents are allowed to "suit up" and go into the O.R. with their child until they go under general anesthesia (GA). As we go to the room the nurses all were so excited to see Ty. The last time they saw him he was 3 1/2 years old. They couldn't believe he was so big. Neither can I really. Time sure does go fast. So the nurse anethesist put chocolate flavoring on Ty's GA mask and showed it to him. He was so funny. He was like, "Yummy! my favorite" and he pretended to lick the mask. It did smell good. I am sure he was hungry too because he had not had anything to eat or drink since around 8:00pm Tuesday night. He fell right asleep, and I was escorted out to wait. The surgery took around 2 hours to perform.

Dr. Ritch called me when it was all over and told me that things went "technically really well" and that he was on his way to recovery. Oh yes, and that he had videotaped the surgery and we would get a copy. Now I realize that sounds probably disgusting to some of you, but I think it is too cool. I love to watch stuff like that.

They had given Ty morphine so he was out of it for a while. In the recovery room we learned that Ty was going to stay all night at the hospital. Remember we were staying an hour away in NJ. With all of Ty's surgeries we have never had to stay overnight. This was a first for us.

They moved us upstairs to a semi-private room to let Ty recover. Things went well until they moved another family in who spoke Indian. Let's just say they didn't speak quietly, and I am not really sure they knew much English. Welcome to NYC, a diverse melting pot!

Ty woke up to a foreign language and no vision. To say he was frightened was an understatement. He cried out to me and reached for me! Oh my, it was so hard to watch. He started to cry and tell me he was scared. We prayed together which helped him calm down, and thank goodness I brought his I-pod. I plugged his earphones in and turned it to Chris Tomlin. He finally fell asleep. Later the Indian family left, and no one else was placed in our room. Thank goodness.

He slept in and out for a few hours while Andy had left to go get me some clothes and other things for our overnight stay. At this point we both were really wishing we had stayed in Manhattan. Ty woke up again and this time he really felt bad. He threw up twice. It turns out he was having a reaction to the anesthesia. This was another first for him. He has been under GA so many times that I have lost count. He has never thrown up before. He was ordered some meds and was able to sleep through a LONG night. I had the chair beside him. The next morning he threw up two more times. So we had to stay at the hospital all day long to make sure he stopped vomiting and also to monitor his glaucoma pressure (IOP). All day long the docs were giving him IOP checks.

Now I want to give you a little background on his surgeries. He actually had two things done. The first one is the shunt tube, which some of you remember that he had in his left eye. The shunt is our backup method. The other procedure is called a deep sclerotomy, or "window" as I call it for short. They basically make a window in the eye to make a drainage port for the extra fluid, which is causing Ty's increased IOP. They are hopeful that this will work. The waiting game is on now because in order for us to know if it works will not be evident for 1 to 2 weeks. After the "window" surgery the IOP tends to go high. This is normal the docs have said. They were impressed by the fact that Ty's IOP never climbed above 29, which is what it was running before surgery. So they put him back on all of his meds in order to bring the IOP down again. Also he has major swelling in his eye, which is contributing to the high IOP. They have told us as his swelling decreases then the IOP should decrease too. If it works, then they will slowly wean Ty off of his meds. The docs goal is to have his IOP at 15 and to not be on meds. This would be awesome!!!!

As far as his vision is concerned it is very blurry. He was able to open his eye Wed. night briefly and see me and Andy. This was a huge praise. The eye is extremely sore and feels as if he has sandpaper in it. This is from the stitches and the swelling. He kept it closed most of Thursday and Friday, but this morning has opened it a little bit. He has to wear a clear plastic shield over it. This is what it looks like. His lips were also extremely swollen from the GA.

He will continue to regain his vision as he heals. It sure is hard to keep an active 6 year old boy still! That is another of my prayer requests. Also for WWF between Ty and Evan to be on hold for a bit, or in other words no wrestling matches. Ty will see his Knoxville doctor on Monday, and then he and Andy will head back to NYC on Thursday for a recheck. We pray that we continue to see healing and also decrease IOP. I am gonna wrap this post up b/c it is soooo long that ya'll are probably tired of reading it. First though, I want to thank all of our prayer warriors. I especially want to thank the staff and students at Grace Christian Academy and Grace Preschool for praying so hard and for loving our boy!! There are many more too that I have on my heart to thank. In the next few posts, I would like to share some of our "whispers from God" and also a good funny that Andy did. Before I go I would just like to encourage you to really get to know GOD!! All things are possible with HIM. We could never go through this without HIM. Also search out the different names of GOD. If you didn't know He has different names, well you do now. Although they are all specific to us the one that stands out the most is The Lord Who Heals, or Jehovah-rapha!! I encourage you to get to know all of His names. A great book for this is Kay Arthur's, "Lord, I Want to Know You"

Until next time...