Home!

We are home!

Whew, the last couple of days have been exhausting. The cath itself really went as smoothly as we could have hoped (including the excellent news that came out of it, AND having one of our favorite nurses both days) and Magnus's recovery was a lot easier than last time. It was mostly easier on us parents, too, although I didn't mention that I did have an hour of anxiety when the cath lab paged us to say that they were finished, and when I called back they said that they were finished but that they "didn't really do anything" and that the doctor would explain when he met with us in an hour or so. This made me very nervous, since the plan going into the cath was to coil as many of his collateral veins as his pressures wouldn't allow, so not doing anything seemed like it meant bad news. As it turned out, they didn't coil any of his collaterals because they felt they didn't need to, and as I mentioned yesterday, basically everything looked as good as could be hoped.

Last time he had a lot of bleeding at the cath sites and clearly didn't feel good for about 24 hours afterward. This time, he was a bit groggy when we first saw him, but the nurse in the anesthesia recovery unit said that he had woken up "really fast" and was mostly his old self right away. After a cath, you're supposed to lie flat and keep your legs straight to protect the catheterization site in the groin. Definitely NOT easy to enforce with an active 2-year-old! We managed to keep him distracted pretty well with videos, but he kept trying to get up and run around.

At 5:30 his "bedrest" was finally over, and shortly after that, we got a pass to go down to the playroom, which we'd never done before. Magnus had a great time playing with toys and drawing pictures, but by 7:30, he was clearly tired, so we took him back to his room and tried to get him ready for bed. Of course, in the hospital, you don't always have a lot of control over your own schedule, and the nurses had to come in and check his vitals and stuff, and with all the excitement, even though he was really tired he didn't end up falling asleep until nearly 10.

Then, at 2 a.m., when the nurse came to check his vitals again, we found that his feeding tube had become disconnected from the feeding pump, and his bedding, pajamas, and diaper all needed to be changed. He didn't fall asleep again until 5 a.m.! We got 2 more hours of sleep and then had to be awoken for more medical stuff, but we basically got to go home first thing this morning! We had a few little hiccups with medication changes (he's now on all once or twice a day meds, which is much easier for us!) and a little bleeding incident when they took out his IV, but we were home by 9:30. And now I am going to take a nap.