A Couple of Surgeries

Christopher finally stayed healthy long enough to have a few procedures done. He had his left tear duct probed and flushed because it was clogged, he had a bronchoscopy to see why he keeps getting croup, and he was circumcised. Here he is in the cutest little hospital gown, as happy as can be.

  One last shot of the goopy eye. (Yes, I munch on those cheeks all day long)

The bronchoscopy showed why he was having problems with croup. He had a few cysts that had formed and what's called subglottic stenosis (an abnormal narrowing right below his vocal folds). The doctor said his airway was the size of a newborn. This is pretty normal since he was intubated for two weeks after his first surgery. He will have to have this procedure done again in a few weeks to make sure the cysts don't come back.

Here are some shots of his airway. The top left is a picture of his vocal chords. You can see that the left one is in a closed position, and is pretty much paralyzed like that. The next two show the cysts just below his vocal chords, and the last one is a picture of his bronchi (where the trachea branches off to the lungs).

Top left is just another shot of the narrowed airway, then a shot of the balloon they used to dilate the airway and pop the cysts. The bottom picture is his airway after the procedure. Quite a big difference!

 Here he is just a few days after the surgery. No more goopy eye! He reaches for me like this all the time, and I can't resist.

Leah's turn! When she was born she had a pretty good sized umbilical hernia, as you can see here:

 She was pretty excited to have her own day at the hospital and get some attention. Here she is all dressed and ready to go.

 Daddy got her a present to open after she woke up. She carried it the whole time.

 They give kids the option of walking back, riding a tricycle, or riding in a wagon. She chose the wagon and the doctor gave her a Tangled book. We told her that the doctor would put a mask on her face just like her nebulizer and she would just fall asleep. She didn't seem nervous at all! She even got to choose the scent of the gas they would give her. She chose strawberry.

 She was very happy when she woke up. She just gave me a big hug and wanted her slurpee. Then she opened her present from her dad. She got a Star Sapphire action figure! She actually asked for this. For those of you who aren't total nerds, Star Sapphire is a character in the Green Lantern comics.

 A sleepy smile. She went home soon after waking up and stayed in our bed for the rest of the day. I had her sleep on her mattress on our floor that night because I thought she would wake up needing pain meds, but she didn't! The next day she didn't do much, either, but by the third day she was back to her normal activity. They let her keep the gas mask that still smells like strawberry, and she shows it to everyone.