Dilation #8

Avery had a dilation of his esophagus done this morning at Sacred Heart by his GI doc here, Dr. Sacks.   This is the first one he's had to have since December of 2010, so he's been doing very well. However, when they went in to retrieve the nickel several months ago, they noticed that his suture site was pretty narrow. It was up to us as to whether or not we wanted the dilation, and it wasn't an easy decision to make considering his history of the (triple) perforation. I didn't want it to get any worse, though, and him seriously choke or just make it that much harder to dilate in the future, so we opted to have it done before Phil leaves for SOS next week. 

You'd think by now that we'd have to drag him kicking and screaming to the hospital, but he did great. He just asked which doctor he was seeing and where they were going to poke him. Poor guy. We assured him he'd be asleep and wouldn't feel any pokes. While waiting to go back to the OR he colored, watched Mickey Mouse, and played with some cars stickers. The worst part of it all was the hand-off to the OR nurse. They didn't give him anything to calm him down beforehand, so she had to pry him off of me kicking and screaming...pretty sure that was just as bad for me as it was for him. :( He was quickly put to sleep, however, and procedure lasted a little over an hour. His esophagus was 8mm wide (the average adult's is 15), and they widened it up to 11mm. He was fine when he came off sedation. He didn't complain of pain, but was just grumpy from being thirsty and hungry. We had promised him a milkshake and an "old mcdonald's hamburger with cheese," as he calls it...to which he said "A milkshake and a hamburger?! Oh my goodness!!"  We could only deliver on the milkshake part today though because they didn't want him eating any solid food until dinner time.

Here he is (hiding from the camera) with his Whataburger vanilla shake, which he scarfed down...followed by a popsicle, a yogurt, and orange juice. After the early morning, I was kind of looking forward to a lazy afternoon of movies on the couch, but he was back to his rambunctious self in no time (and even landed himself in time out after being home for less than 30 min...sigh). We are so thankful that the procedure went well and are hoping this was our last trip to the hospital for a while.