Alex's Surgery

I survived my first experience with a child of mine going through surgery.

*This post will discuss male anatomy, just as a head's up.*

My darling baby Alex had what we thought was an undescended testicle that the urologist was going to look for in his abdomen and bring down to his scrotum. The reasons for doing this were not only for fertility, but also because a testicle should not be in the hotter environment of the abdomen, as it creates a higher risk for malignancy/cancer.The doctors said it was best to get this taken care of now, before he even turns two. So we took our little 20 month old to the hospital for outpatient surgery. Here we are playing around in the waiting room.....waiting.

Luckily he was the first surgery of the day, so we didn't have to wait too long.

We had good and bad results from the surgery.
Good---he did great and everything went fine. The whole procedure only took an hour. Bad---the surgeon found an undeveloped testicle in his scrotum, which means he only has one good one, and there isn't another one floating around somewhere.
This meant that we avoided poking around in his abdomen looking for another one, which lowered the trauma he had to experience. Only one incision, three stitches, not bad at all.
Of course I worry that he'll be teased or have other problems with insensitive people growing up, but we'll just do our best to help him feel like there's nothing wrong with him.
Waking up from anesthesia was pretty tricky. Alex gets asthma when he gets sick, and something about the anesthesia triggered his asthma response. His face was read and itchy and he was VERY disturbed to be coming back into consciousness.
We had him on a breathing treatment and on oxygen, and ended up staying 4 hours after surgery to get him back to normal before leaving the hospital.
He looks so sweet and fragile in these pictures, my heart just breaks. I am so thankful to the many doctors and nurses who took such great care of my baby. I'm also grateful to the friends and family who prayed and fasted on our behalf, which is I'm SURE the reason everything went off as well as possible.
When I handed him off to the anesthesiologist to take into the operating room, it was hard to hold back the tears. I took PJ's hand and we walked into the waiting room. I felt this overwhelming sense of peace come over me. I knew he would be ok and that God was watching over our little family.