Hernia Repairs, Round Two

Shortly after our return from Thanksgiving in Idaho, Mason was in the bathtub and coughed really hard.  I happened to notice that he had two bulges in his groin area when he coughed, in the same place Jeff had had his hernia earlier this year. Since his birthday and yearly check-up were a week away I decided I would ask our pediatrician about it.  At his check up, Mason wouldn't really cough hard and our pediatrician had a hard time feeling if there was a hernia or not. He suggested that we wait and see if it worked its way out or not.  I pushed the issue saying that our out of pocket maximum had been met with our insurance, and if there was a problem that I wanted it taken care of by the end of the year.  He scheduled an appointment for us at the Riverton Primary Children's Outpatient Clinic and a week later we went in for his check-up.

  It seriously took the surgeon less than a minute to tell me that Mason had bilateral inguinal hernias.  He explained that it is a birth defect that happens when the tube the testicles descend through fails to close.  This is the same type of hernia Jeff had repaired back in April, Jeff's just took 32 years to become a problem.  After Mason's diagnosis, I asked the surgeon if there was anyway we could have the surgery done before the end of the year since it would be 100% covered by our insurance.  It was already Monday, December 10, and I was worried we couldn't get it done in time. I talked with the nurse that did the scheduling and she told me that they had an opening for surgery the next morning, or in a week.  After a quick phone call to Jeff, we decided to go ahead and do the surgery the next day, so we didn't risk Mason getting sick in the next week and having to push his surgery into the new year.

The next morning Mason and I were at the Primary's hospital wing in Riverton at 6AM. After checking in, we were taken upstairs to surgery.

We noticed that the waiting room was donated by Jeff's employer.  Of course we had to text Daddy a picture.

Mason was taken back to a room where they got his vitals, and changed into a hospital gown.  They gave him this puppy and he instantly fell in love with it.

Next, we were taken to a second waiting room, right outside of the surgical area.  Since there was only us and one other little boy and his mom there, Mason and I played games on the floor.  He loved this toy.

 Eventually the nurses came and gave him some medicine to drink.  It made it so his eyes glazed over and he went limp.  The medicine makes it so he has no memory of being taken into surgery.  We placed him in a wagon, and they took him back to the operating room.

Heading back to surgery.

I went back out to the first waiting room, and in about a half hour they called me back to meet with the surgeon.  I was really surprised at how fast the surgery was, considering he had hernias on both sides.  Jeff only had one hernia to repair and I waited a lot longer to talk to his surgeon.  The surgeon told me that it was an easy repair and that there was a fatty deposit that had started to form on the right hernia.  I was then taken back out to the waiting room to wait for Mason to wake up from anesthesia.  It took him  longer that normal to come out of the anesthesia and I was getting a little worried.  Finally they called me back and I could hear him screaming as soon as I walked through the doors.  To say that he was NOT happy was an understatement.  He screamed for a solid half hour and nothing I or the nurses did could calm him down.  He finally started to settle down once they took his IV out.  After about an hour in recovery we were released to go home.  He slept most of the first day, but the next day he acted as if nothing was wrong and was running around as happy as could be.

Finally calmed down in the recovery room.

Then on Wednesday night, he started acting like he was in a lot of pain.  He fell asleep on the couch about 5:00 that night and woke up about 7:00 miserable.  He tried to get off of the couch and couldn't even walk.  We quickly gave him more pain medication and tried to snuggle him.  He was miserable.  He started screaming.  We had no idea what to do. 

 Finally at 2:00 in the morning I called the after hours surgery number on our hospital discharge papers.  They could hear him screaming in the background and told me I needed to bring him into the ER right away.  I took him to the ER in Riverton, since that is where he had his surgery. The doctor looked him over and couldn't figure out what was wrong.  The incision looked fine and he didn't have a fever.  They ordered x-rays to see if his bowels had some how twisted.  The doctor came back in and told me they couldn't find anything wrong and he acted quite rudely towards me, as if I had wasted his time.  I was so annoyed. He gave us a prescription for Lortab and sent us home and told us to call the surgeon when their office opened. 

In the ER after getting some Lortab.

 I called the surgeons office as soon as they opened, told them what had taken place at the ER, and they said that since nothing could be found wrong with his hernia repair, that I should call my normal pediatrician and make an appointment.  All of this time Mason was still horribly miserable and he had now spiked a fever of 101.  I was at my wits end after having no sleep and getting the run around from all of these doctors.  I called our pediatrician's office and made an appointment.

 Now I have to say I LOVE our pediatrician. As soon as we got there and I explained all that had happened in the past few days, he was very concerned. He started with a basic exam, and about five minutes after we got there, he figured out what was wrong.  He took one look in Mason's ears, and declared that Mason had ruptured an ear drum. He asked if the ER doctor had even checked Mason's ears and I told him no.  He looked extremely shocked.  He asked again which ER I had taken him to, and when I told him he said, "Well, I hate to say you get what you pay for, but you really should have just brought him up to Primary's.  We would have caught this right away." He had a Resident with him and turned to him and said, "I always tell my Residents, simple things in simple places.  Its easy to overlook the basics."  My pediatrician is also an ER doctor at Primary's and he said they always check basic things like ears, throat, etc. I'm sure the ER doc just thought his misery was related to the surgery, but I was still annoyed that my child had screamed and suffered so long and the ER doc just wrote me off and acted like I had wasted his time. We've had some good experiences at that hospital, but I should have known better than to take him to Riverton. A few years ago Jonas had a problem that ended us up in the ER there and they just shipped us up to Primary's. My doc explained that they aren't a bad ER, just not trained to deal with children's problems and that they constantly ship kids up to Primary's.

After almost 24 hours of no sleep, I was so happy to have an answer and to get Mason on the road to feeling better. A few days later he was as good as new!