Pony Goes A-Cuttin' Uh Huh

My Little Pony, my #2 son, my sweet-as-Histinex little 9-year-old, is home from his surgery and doing well. And by 'doing well', I mean 'laying on the couch with his DS Lite and vomiting every 30 minutes'. That's the bad news. The good news is that when they put him under general anesthesia and wrestled around with that elbow, they were able to do a closed reduction on his avulsed medial epicondyle, and didn't have to slice him open. So my boy had surgery with no incision. Go figure! That's the greatest thing since sliced bread, by cracky!

We left home at 5:45 a.m. to make sure we were on time if there was a snag in rush hour traffic. Downtown St. Louis is not my favorite drive. Thank the Gummi Mary, HH was at the helm. For some reason, traffic was light this morning, and we got there at 7:35. By the time we parked and got checked in and got our personal pager, we only waited 5 minutes before they called him back into the surgery holding area. Criminy! That place is a city in itself. There were rooms up to #46 that I saw, but I don't know it that's really how many rooms there were. We were in #19, right by the nurses' desk. The Pony played his DS most of the time, with a brief respite to climb into some high-water pajama bottoms and a tie-on pajama shirt. I was not thrilled with the pattern, which reminded me of a cross among Raggedy Andy, the drawings in a Mercer Mayer book, and a child-eating clown. The Pony didn't notice.

Everybody except the cook paid a visit, to explain his/her part in the exquisitely-choreographed ballet of the Pony's no-cut surgery. We saw a female intern, upon whose entrance HH announced, "Here's the nurse." Ladies, we can't get no respect from the Hillbilly crowd. (I am not saying that as an insult to the nurses. They run the place, after all, and know more about what's good for my boy than an intern. But I hate it when people are 'assumed' to be something they're not. Like a man and a woman at school, where HH would automatically assume that the man was the principal and the woman was the teacher). The surgeon announced that the plan was to x-ray the elbow in the OR, and see if they could do the closed reduction. If not, they would try poking a pointy thing in the Pony's arm to coax that broken piece back where it belonged. And if that also failed, they would make an incision and place a wire through the piece and the radius to hold them together. The anesthesiologist and her helper were spared the 'nurse' comment from HH, having been chastised by me the first time. The Pony chose the new Dr. Pepper-flavored gas for his anesthesia

He got a bit nervous at 9:00, so they gave him a shot of Versed laced with Tylenol. By 'shot', I mean 'an ounce and a half of a liquid narcotic cocktail in a plastic shot glass'. He said it was the nastiest thing he ever tasted, and that his wished he had got the needle. Only that wasn't the option, it was liquid or pill.

General anesthesia is not his friend. He has been queasy most of the day. The surgery was scheduled for 9:30, but they took him in around 10:00. At 10:45, the surgeon called our room, and reported that My Little Pony was all done, and would be as good as new. At 11:00, we saw him in the recovery area, and they wheeled him back to the room about 11:05. He was still a bit stoned out of his mind, and in some pain, but they gave him some oxycodone, which "made it hurt not as much", he reported. Hmm...I believe oxycodone is the active ingredient of my sweet, sweet Histinex.

He had set his sites on a Popsicle after the surgery. When the nurse told him, "I have orange, cherry, and grape," he told her, "Then I don't want one." I don't know what he was expecting. Instead he had a few vanilla wafers and some Coke. He asked for more, but they said not to overdo it, and gave him about 4 more. Methinks they knew that when his anti-nausea medicine wore off, there would be trouble. They even gave us a plastic vomit basin thingy for the drive home. By 'gave', I mean 'charged the insurance company $500'. We had to wait until 1:00 when the Pony was unwoozy enough to leave. He had planned to walk out, but after his ordeal, decided to take the wheelchair ride. He said his legs were shaky. We arrived home at 3:45, after a stop for lunch. HH and I did not get a Popsicle or vanilla wafers. We had a donut around 10:00, but that's another story.

I can see why Children's Hospital is ranked #7 in the nation for pediatric hospitals. They really know what they're doing. As opposed to the local witch doctors. The Pony has to return to the surgeon's office in 7-10 days to see if the bone is healing correctly.

This now concludes the Pony Report. Tomorrow, I will spill an HH story and news of Traitor Mabel. Uh huh.