April 27th

 We woke up on the  27th April 2023 a day I will never forget, nervous and scared. 

So many questions crossed my mind, was he going to be okay? Was he going to survive the operation? Were they going to get all the tumour out?
We walked to the hospital in silence, from the room they had put us up in, in the most amazing house just down the road from the hospital. There was a lovely lady who worked there who was so kind and friendly and just wanted to help as many families as she could. 

We got to the hospital Zack was babbling away, my parents had met us there as they wanted to come and see Zack before his operation. We waited with Zack, saw more doctors and then they gave us a time for an MRI, they said they didn't know if they were going to go straight from the MRI into the operation or do the MRI and then discuss it and bring him back later. 

We walked Zack down to the sedation room, Giving him a kiss goodbye and not knowing if the surgery was going to be life saving or life ending, whether that would be the last kiss, the last anything. 
Sam went a little further in and held him whilst they gave him some medicine. Sam came out and I burst into tears. We now had to wait 8 -9 hours! The nurses told us to go shopping, go to the cinema anything to take our minds off. We couldn't think of any thing worse than sitting in a cinema. So we went for a walk, we walked round the outskirts of Russell Square about 4 times, Sat on a bench, got up and walked more, sat on another bench, walked some more. We sat in silence for the majority of the time just looking at each other. I was totally numb! 
Eventually we ended up sitting in a costa in Russel square just waiting for the phone to ring to tell us it was over and we could go back and see him. After about 6 hours which seemed like days we got a call from the nurse to say it was all going well, and they would call us again when he was brought up to recovery. We decided to go for another walk round the block and ended up back at the hospital in the parents waiting room of the ward. The nurse came to chat to us offered us tea and coffee. 8 hours and 21 minutes later the doctor finally came down and told us it was all over and it all went according to plan, however during the operation his lungs struggled with breathing so he was now on a ventilator to help him, my heart sunk, was he going to get through this? Would he have problems breathing forever? I asked if we could see him. Half hour later we were taken to the PICU. Zack was lying there with tubes everywhere, eyes closed, bandages over his head. I burst into tears and was in shock but yet so glad he was here and over the operation. We stayed for about an hour and then the nurses told us to go back to the room and get some dinner and sleep as we couldn't stay with him. I made sure they had our numbers and to call me any time if he needed anything. We did leave and went and sat in the lobby of the hospital, my sister and brother and bother and sister in law were coming up to bring us dinner. When they showed up I was so grateful to see familiar faces I felt like I had been away from my family for months. We also had a meeting with camp simcha that night about how they could help us, there were absolutely fantastic. 

That night I struggled to sleep knowing my little man was on a ventilator, about 5 in the morning I gave up trying to sleep and left the room where we were staying and walked down the road to the hospital and went and sat in the PiCU with Zack, just knowing I was with him made me feel better. 

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