Braces for Caleb and Surgery for Liam

The day before Christmas break, Caleb had braces put on! In preparation, two weeks earlier he had 8 teeth pulled: four wisdom and four for the braces. Before going in he wanted to make sure I would film him coming out of anesthesia because he was so sure he'd be totally weird and could therefore post a video and get a million hits from the clip. I thought he was going to cry when I asked him how he felt and he said he was pretty much normal! Poor kid with his hopes for weirdness and resulting fame dashed. His day was spent on the couch watching a few movies I picked up on the way home and eating shakes he had to spoon into his mouth. This was also the night of the kids market and I was in full cinnamon roll mode when the others got home from school, so I was grateful that Caleb was old enough to be self contained. By day three he was still spoon feeding himself shakes and wearing an ice pack around his cheeks, but soon after he pulled through and started back on regular foods and normal life.

They wouldn't allow photos in the procedure room or the recovery room (HIPPA), so Jared (who was there when he went in) and I had to be stealth to get a few quick shots:

Ten days later he has his appointment for braces and was very worried about having to keep his mouth ajar for more than an hour, and to be fair Caleb has a heightened fear of any dental work. In fact, they used more anesthesia when he was having his teeth pulled because they couldn't get him to settle down. I let the assistants know this as they were the first to start probing and prepping his mouth and Caleb was already breathing deeply and squeezing my hand like a vice grip. It took about 20 minutes for him to settle down and just accept the fact that yes his mouth was being stretched open and yes there was this tool blocking his tongue, but nothing hurt...it was just uncomfortable. Three hours later he emerged with a shiny silver smile and grateful to have people out of his mouth. He reasoned that since he'd missed his only really important class that day that he could stay home and I agreed being that I had to now take Liam to the pediatric surgeon for an appointment I never dreamed would take another 3 hours! In the rush of the morning, then again before picking up Liam I forgot to take a book to either appointment....dumb, dumb, dumb! But got caught up on all things in People magazine and listened to an African woman on the pediatric floor talk about her son who looked to be a newborn, but was in reality 6 months old. He was born prematurely weighing 1#3oz and 12 inches long.!! Jeremiah was his name and to everyone he was truly a miracle baby.

Liam: early in the summer he showed me a lump on his neck that was the size of a pencil eraser. It felt like a tick bite, but there was no bite mark, no "bulls-eye" redness, so we watched it. Honestly, I totally forgot about it until November when he said that I should feel this lump and discovered that it had more than tripled in size! I made an appointment that next day and met with our great pediatrician who suggested that we meet with a pediatric surgeon for something she supposed was benign, but would likely need to be removed. The pediatric surgeon happens to be a friend of ours...the kids go to the same schools and we share the same piano teacher, and I was thrilled to be in his care as he is a great doctor. So the day after Christmas, Jared brought Liam to the UVA surgery center at 6:00am.

Liam was most nervous about getting an IV placed and was hoping that he'd be under anesthesia before they poked around his arm, but other than that he was sort of excited about this adventure. I on the other hand was not as enthused as they suspected that they'd have to place a breathing tube down his throat because he's likely be on his stomach for the procedure. That made me very nervous and I was thrilled when Jared texted me to say that they would be able to place him on his side and there would be no breathing tube. When I finally got to the hospital after getting Caleb dropped off for a youth temple trip Liam was out and finished and gave the following details about the experience:  He said the worst part was definitely worrying about it and that the best part was hearing from the nurse and anesthesia doctors that he was belly laughing his way into la-la land, which he has no real recollection of doing. He definitely came out of anesthesia more quickly than Caleb and we all ventured to the movie later that afternoon... Walking with Dinosaurs. He did walk around with a hunched shoulder for several days, but other than that no complaints. The lump turned out to be a benign and fairly common pylomatricoma, which is basically a tumor that happens in hair follicles.

Four days after the surgery we joined some friends at Massanutten Water park where his bandage finally fell off revealing the scar that will disappear in time beneath all those freckles.

I'm hoping that we can avoid any more procedures during the following year, but I am grateful for good doctors and for good insurance.