After falling a sleep "early" compared to the nights before, I woke up early and went to visit Noah. He was already awake due to the Doctors and Nurses checking on him. He was very calm and relaxed for being 12 hours out of major surgery. Between having the catheter in and wanting to be in his original room he had moments of distraught. Overall he was amazing! He was a very easy patient as our PICU nurse described. He went in and out of sleep most of that day which was good because they had an after surgery MRI scheduled, therefore, he couldn't eat until they did that again.
One major thing kept setting him off. He wanted to see his sister Sydney. And somehow in the waiting room the same was happening. His sister wanted to see her big brother Noah. Them both saying the same thing broke our heart. I still tear up today thinking of that short time they spent apart.
To help Noah stay focused we kept the next goal verbal (ie. get the catheter out, eat, pee, etc). And that made that day (12 hours) go decently fast. It was shortly after dinner the following day they moved Noah from PICU to ICU room where his entire family could be visiting at one time. And Noah and Sydney got to see each other again! It was harder to keep the next goal in mind because he really just wanted to go to his original room. Keeping him focused on healing and feeling better was difficult. He got to the point he didn't want to talk to anyone and rather pretend to sleep or ignored us while watching TV. Luckily he kept on improving and only had to spend one night in the ICU.
That next day, Saturday - 2 days after surgery, they wanted him up and walking. We first started with a walk from his bed to the hall way to a wheel chair. That helped with his social interaction. Getting out of bed and feeling free lifted his spirits. It also helped speed up the day. By the end of Saturday he was eating and drinking. He fulfilled all the requirements to leave the ICU. He got his wish to move to the "floor", what the ICU nurses called the other wings of the children's floor.
Once we moved out there, he was the opposite compared to the ICU. He would talk to us more, he would just have short periods where he didn't want to talk to people. Even though most of Saturday he was doing good, he just didn't seem himself yet. Sunday morning bright and early the doctors came through and said that if we were ready we could be discharged that day. And I requested that we spend at least one more day in the hospital because of him not really being himself yet. And the doctor was OK with that. Both my wife and I were glad we did. Noah came out of his shell on Sunday, showed us that he was back. Sunday was a filled with lots of visitors. And if no one could tell, Tiff and I were exhausted. Because there was so many visitors, I went back with Sydney and took a nap (2 long hours).
On Monday, they released us before lunch. And the first thing we did is we went to the closest McDonald's and had lunch. During lunch Katie Gearhart and her parents, who was in Hershey for her own check-ups, stopped and visited Noah. And Noah was doing real good so we decided to stop at Hershey Chocolate world to give him something unique to do.
After that we went back to the Ronald McDonald house to clean-up and check-out and started our trek home.
Now we just had a waiting game for the pathology tests to come back.
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