Adoption Adventures: Getting John

Long, Busy Day Today

John, his parents and Grandma M have had a very busy day today.

Grandma M and Ron got up at 4 a.m. today so that they could be at the hospital before John went in for his Pituitary Gland scan MRI.  We arrived around 6 a.m. so we could spend about a half hour with John, Laurie, and also pray.

John left his room around 6:40 a.m. to go to Radiology.  He was entertained along the way by playing with a little green, inflatable dinosaur that his Grandma and Grandpa Besonen sent him.  He thoroughly loved making his Da Da blow up the toy...only to deflate it so Da Da could blow it up again.

John was wheeled into the MRI room around 7:10 a.m.  For various good reasons, Da Da was nominated to go in with John and stay with him until he was sedated.  John cried out of fear and anger, but he quickly fell asleep.  The MRI took about an hour to conduct.

After the MRI, John was wheeled directly into the operating room so that could remain sedated.  The GI doctor checked out his "innards" with a scope and made sure everything was OK.  She then guided the surgeon, from inside the stomach, to where the incision was to be made and the feeding "button" was to be placed.  All went well and it took less than an hour to complete.

John woke up angry and a little confused in the Recovery Room.  He has done this in all three previous surgeries.  He is a little disoriented when he wakes up, and is angry when we are not already there to comfort him.  He eventually settled down.

The nurse that took care of John in the Recovery Room has had a lot of similar experiences to us.  She has adopted two Chinese children from Hunan Province (she is Chinese herself).  She used to be a missionary in East Asia.  She also attends the same church as we do, New Life Church.  We had a very good conversation about common experiences in raising medical special needs Chinese children.

John was wheeled back into his room around 10:30 a.m.  He immediately complained (cried) of pain and began shaking.  We tried to feed him some water and light food.  Within a half hour, he had thrown up everything he ate and drank all over his mommy.  He did this three times this afternoon and evening.  He also came into fits of severe pain.  The medical personnel think it is at least partially due to the air used to inflate his stomach during the operation, as well as disrupting the stomach lining.

John has had about three doses of pain medication.  Each time it settles him down and lets him sleep.

His IV stopped working so they had to re-insert it in another location.  It took two tries, which caused a lot of crying and pain for John.  We felt so bad for him as we held and comforted him during this time.

He has become de-hydrated so they have started him on an IV this evening.

This evening he is running about a 101.5 degree fever.  They are monitoring this and are trying to determine if he needs antibiotics.

Everybody hopes that he will be much better tomorrow.  We surely hope so because it's been a long day for everyone.

Please pray for John's complete healing and that he has no complications.