The day after thanksgiving was a rough one. Lucas’s recovery from his surgery has been rough. As straight forward, all be it tramautic as his surgery day was, everything afterward has been awful and crazy. The night after thanksgiving Lucas woke up in the middle of the night crying. In the morning, we found him like this:

He had been coughing in the night, and it had gotten bloody. It was just uncomfortable, and crying…he has been in our bed crying most nights since the surgery. He has had a fever, and has just been miserable. We called them in the middle of the night. They said that bleeding at this point post surgery can be normal. As long as it’s not a huge amount.

I took him to the doctors office and had him examined. The doctor didn’t seem to think that he was too bad. He looked into his throat and there was a huge mucus bubble, that the doctor didn’t recognize.

The fever was concerning, so he prescribed him an antibiotic. We had been giving him pain meds and fever reducers since the surgery, so we were sent home to just stay the course.

Lucas. We went to get blood draws to make sure there wasn’t a serious infection.

We had all been up the night before, like all night. Then, the moment we got up I took Lucas to the doctor.

Mom and Dad were still in town, and I asked if Mirah could hang out with them so we could rest.

They took her for the day, then we rested. His fever was still high, and he was SO lethargic. Around 5:30, Mom and Dad were heading over to bring Mirah back and to have dinner. While we waited for them to arrive, Lucas started throwing up blood. It was a lot. Karl caught the blood in his hands, it was huge clots, and coagulated chunks. Karl was able to dump that into my hands, and was walked from the living room to the bathroom. The blood chunks filled my cupped hands curved on top. I dumped it into the toilet, and went upstairs to call my mom, when Karl called from downstairs, “we’re going to the hospital.” Lucas had puked more blood, this time it was just as much or more, but PURE liquid.

With out hesitation we ran to the car. Lucas didn’t have pants on because we were in the middle of changing him out of his blood soaked clothing when he puked the second time. Karl didn’t have shoes on but there wasn’t time to look for his shoes. I drove, since Karl was already holding Lucas. He just held him. We flew to the Orem ER. After 5 minutes of arguing with the admin guy, we called the doctors office. He said that the Orem ER is garbage and to get him to the Provo ER ASAP. We ran back to the car, and sped to Provo. We checked in, and were quickly admitted.

This is what Lucas looked like:

SO SO SO SO pail.

He got hooked up to oxygen and a monitor. The doctors came in and said he would be going into surgery.

This was the moment I can just see how tiny he really is. And as I write this, how truly terrified I was for him.

Mom, Dad, and Mirah arrived.

And they took us back to pre-op where we met with the surgeon and the anesthesiologist.

They made him wear a cap. He looks amazing.

Karl took Lucas to the bathroom.

Then we waited. It was only about 30 minutes.

I was so glad Dad was there. He and Karl gave Lucas a blessing. Which was giving me so much comfort.

We met with the surgeon. He cauterized Lucas’s throat. vacuumed out his stomach of blood and grunk. And this kid just didn’t want to wake up.

We were admitted to the hospital; me and Lucas spent a very very uncomfortable night together.

 

Things were looking better in the morning.

We were out of there before noon. It was so nice to leave.

He was still so pale. And I love him. Looking better every day.