Off to the OR

It's about 8:00 am Thursday morning.  Ethan is back in surgery right now.  The morning has gone really well.  We took off from Cedar Rapids about 5:30 this morning. 

Everyone here is super nice and made us feel really comfortable.  Ethan's ambulatory surgery nurse, Julie got him checked in for surgery.  Turns out Adam went to Iowa State with her and they hung out together some in their college days.  Nice to see a "familiar" face.  While they were taking Ethan's vitals and such, he kept hiding under his blanket hoping everyone would go away.  

Checking out the fish



Aidan gave Ethan this picture to take along to surgery, since Aidan couldn't go with him.

After that, Ethan got to go off to the play area.  He was having so much fun.  The nurse anesthetist meet us there.  Turns out, she was born and raised in Ames.  Her parents and brother still live in Ames.  We had a lovely conversation about how she used to work at Hickory Park and how wonderful Great Plains Pizza is!  YUM!  I told her how I am a surgical nurse in Ames and she immediately knew one of our anesthesiologists too.  She suggested we give Ethan some Versed.  It is a medication that made him feel groggy and has amnesia effects.

Just when he was starting to act "goofy" they came to take him away.  He went right off with them, no tears shed at all.  It's so nice that he didn't even realize that he was really taken away from us or scared because of the drugs.  Surgery will take about 2 hours and 45 minutes.  They also said that they keep their kiddos in recovery for quite a while and let them wake up slowly on their own.  Dr. Drack will come and talk to us after the surgery is over to let us know how everything went.  We'll update more later today after surgery is over.