Jaxon Day #1...

Jaxon's week started out big with a morning in the out-patient surgery wing. He is well known on that floor and has Dr. Mackenzie (an anesthesiologist) wrapped around his finger, even though he wasn't Jaxon's doctor this time :) He always brings me extra cookies too while I wait, which is awesome!
Jaxon was scheduled for a spinal tap, 2 hip injections and one knee injection. It always takes longer to get into the procedures than it does to do them. He is seen by the anesthesiologist, the nurses that are in the room, the nurses in the procedure with him, Dr. Mason (who came with an assistant this time) who marks him up, rubs his head, and the team from St. Mary's who did the spinal tap. I have to answer a lot of questions, and make sure all of his information is correct.
He gets to pick out a surgical hat, and this time got to wear cool socks and these awesome shorts...he wasn't too impressed to have to change because usually he doesn't have to. He told me that he looks like a hippy in this outfit, and thought it was pretty funny! He was in a pretty good mood and usually is, he knows what is going to go on and has a list of what he wants. As long as it is kept routine, it is fine...he makes sure that they will remove his back patch (the thing that monitors his heart and other vitals) when he is still sleeping, and he wants NO smelly stuff in his mask that puts him to sleep. He was a little nervous about the spinal tap, but they made sure that he would be just fine after, and would be completely asleep when they did it. The team always asks if I want to come along until he falls asleep, but he never needs me...he just rolls away. I am pretty proud of him, he is such a BRAVE one!
He was in for about 30 minutes, it took a little longer because of the spinal tap. When he came back to the little room he was pretty out of it...which is normal, but it didn't take him too long to wake up. He is trying to wake up here, poor guy :(

Dr. Mason was the one who came and talked to me after everything was done. Of course there were no test results on the spinal fluid yet, but he did say that his pressure was very high. He was actually surprised at how high it was. His normal pressure for his age should be around 200mm/water (which I have no idea what that really means), but he had a reading of 424mm/water. They called his neurologist, Dr. Keating right away and she said to take enough to get him down to a normal level. They took enough off to get him down to 246, which would help a lot. When Dr. Mason told me how high the pressure was, I guess I wasn't surprised...this confirmed how I have been feeling for the past 6 months or so. He said "Well Andrea, you were right about Jax", and that felt good :) But then Dr. Mason seems to always know the  right thing to say!
As far as his injections went, Dr. Mason said things went fine. He didn't put as much into the knee as he was going to, to save it for the hips. He said that he knew that his right hip would need quite a bit, just based on how he was able to move it around before the procedure. But he was surprised to see that the left hip actually looked worse. These last 2 times while doing the hip injections, he has had to use an ultrasound to see where he is going in the hip. That usually happens when kids get older, they get a little more meat on their bones. When he looked at his right hip he said it was pretty much bone on bone with a little fluid in between (which is kinda how it should look, maybe with a little more cushion), but his left hip looked like bone, then what he said looked like "crab meat", then bone. There was quite a bit of inflammation in there, so he put a little more meds into his left hip. It is weird cause his left hip hasn't been the sore one, but maybe his right one hurts because he has been compensating for his left.
We got back to the hotel around noon, after Jaxon woke up and ate something, which wasn't too bad. But according to Hayden we were gone FOREVER!!! He and Jill decided to hang in the hotel, have breakfast and relax, but it got pretty long for Hayden. He was bored, but that never takes very long to happen for him, so I am sure it was in the 1st 20 minutes of having breakfast that he was complaining about it. Poor Jill, she had to deal with him....but she made it. I took Hayden swimming for a little when we got back, then we decided to go shopping. The boys had got some money from Grandma and Grandpa, and Great Grandma Knick, that they wanted to spend. We got Jaxon in his wheelchair and walked around the mall for awhile, just to kill some time. Jill and I got some good coffee, and Jax and Hayden got a smoothie. Next we decided we all deserved a good early supper, since non of us had eaten much that day. We went to Olive Garden and took our time with a wonderful meal. We made a quick trip to Target where Jaxon bought some Legos and Hayden got a big pack of football cards that he sorted a million different ways that night. The rest of the evening was spent relaxing and watching the Olympics, which have been so much fun to watch, and a great distraction for our evenings on this trip! For Jaxon's tests the next morning, he had to go to bed around 11pm, so we all stayed up and just watch the Olympics together. It was a fun end to our day!