Surgery and Thanksgiving

Back in August Colin came to me with this tiny bump on his finger. He asked what it was and I didn't know but we were heading to his pediatrician in a few weeks so we kept an eye on it and asked her.  She said it was a vein issue and sent us to dermatology. They sent us to plastic surgery and we scheduled surgery the first week of October for the day before Thanksgiving. 

Well that thing kept growing bigger and bigger.  And then when Colin broke his wrist they weren't sure if his cast would come off in time because they needed access to his entire arm.  So basically every week I would call plastic surgery and give them an update on his arm and whether his cast was still on or not. I basically began calling with "hi this is colins mom" and they would know right away who I was.  The next available surgery wasn't until January and besides the fact that it was growing and painful we had already met our medical deductible between the two broken bones and all their xrays so we wanted to get it done this year for multiple reasons. 

We had to have his surgery at the main children's hospital because of his asthma in case there were any complications.  And aparently ortho shares the hall with plastic surgery so the nurse was asking if Colin had gotten his bones set there and when I said yes doctor so and so did it she just said "oh I like the other doctor better" haha but so far Colin's bones have been healing the way the should (at last as far as we know!)

It was the same doctor who did Joels surgery so we felt comfortable with putting Colin in his care.  Its never easy though watching them wheel them back to the operating room.  And then waiting.  They said it would be 30 minutes. There is a tv screen where you can see when they get taken back, when surgery starts, when they go into the recovery room. Colin's took about 1.5 hours! I knew it would take longer than they originally said because it was so much bigger and the doctor made sure he got it all and then he had to cauterize some veins that were pooling blood to it.

I have so many pictures of his thumb to document the growth of it. At the rate it was growing I was so glad we didn't have to wait until January to get it removed and tested. I asked and they said that the broken wrist had nothing to do with the rate of growth so I cant imagine how big it wouldve gotten in January.  It was a type tumor - they called it a vascular malformation and we have the official results from the biopsy. But not cancerous thank goodness and they have no clue why or how it started. He could've been born with it they said. 

His poor left arm.  But his stitches are almost all dissolved and hopefully in a week he gets to take his metal brace off.

He was so out of it and didnt feel good coming out of anesthesia

He kept the barf bag with him the whole way home.  He was starving  and only wanted CHickfila.  When he broke his wrist he went from eating lunch at 1pm to not being able to eat dinner until midnight because if they needed surgery he couldn't have food.  So we tried to get chickfila after he got his cast on but it was closed. So he was looking forward to his peppermint milkshake and chicken sandwich after his surgery. But the poor thing couldn't eat a lot of it and spent most of the afternoon on the couch.  He did find that Norah would refuse to enter the room if he was holding the barf bag! ha! a good way to keep his little sister out. 

Since his surgery was the day before Thanksgiving everyone then came to our house for the weekend.

Mom helped Norah and I with our piano songs.

Little Howard here was waiting at the table LONG before everyone else got there.

Colin is going to have a pretty cool scar from his stitches

Its never Christmas with out Joel knocking a tree down

Colin sat like this a lot with his head in my lap. He would rally at times but for a while we couldn't keep ahead of the pain. They tried to be careful with his wrist too but I know they had to move it to access his veins so both his wrist and thumb were throbbing.

We are just glad he is right handed