Ryan's Surgery

We wanted to get some more information on the blog about Ryan's surgery. I realize this might be playing catch-up, but hey, it's better late than never.

Ryan and Emily before church today

Ryan went in for surgery on April 23 to remove the palatal prosthesis, repair his hard palate, and put new ear tubes in. His surgery was originally scheduled for 6:00 am in Portland, so we got up and left at around 4:00 to get there in time. We checked in and sat in the waiting room for quite a while. We started to wonder why they hadn't called him back, so we went and asked the lady at the desk. It turns out that they had rescheduled Ryan for 1:00 in the afternoon, and hadn't told us. We were a trifle bit perturbed by this news, since Ryan hadn't eaten since the evening before and would now have to wait for another 6-7 hours to even start his surgery.

So, we wandered. There's only so much you can do at a hospital while you're waiting for a surgery to start. The hospital staff was great and got us into a room with toys and video games to distract Ryan while he waited. Ryan handled it better than all of us and only mentioned once that he was hungry.

We finally got into pre-op at 2ish and they gave Ryan some medicine that made him kinda loopy. It was funny to see him trying to change the channels on his little TV and not be able to even really lift his hand. Sure, I felt bad later about laughing at him, but with a little bit of therapy, he outta get over it.

The surgery proceeded without any complications and we stayed overnight in his recovery room. The hospital is set up with a bed in each of the rooms for a parent to spend the night. Our room must have been the deluxe suite, because it was huge and had two beds for parents. Ryan was pretty out of it that evening, but he perked up the next day.


We got home from the hospital and continued Ryan's recovery there. He wasn't able to eat hard solid foods for a while (the doctor said to basically have him on baby food for 4 weeks...yeah, right). I had given Ryan a blessing before his surgery that he would do fine and that he would understand the dietary restrictions that had been placed on him. He did awesome avoiding foods that could injure the palate repair. In fact, on the first Sunday he was able to go back to Church his teacher had brought in some treats for his class that were too hard for Ryan to eat. He told his teacher that he couldn't have them because they were too hard. He then asked her if he could just smell them. What a trooper. His teacher brought him a frostee that week and the primary made him a big get-well poster. Our family, ward, and friends have been very supportive and have helped us immensely to get through this experience.