You’d think that a 7 week old wouldn’t have much need to visit the ER, but on Saturday evening Jack decided that he’d been away from the hospital too long. Around 6:30 pm he started acting incredibly fussy and just plain ticked off. At first we just thought he had gas because he really wanted to stay curled up in a ball, but after some investigation we figured out that it wasn’t just gas. Emily took his diaper off to check if there was something poking him and discovered that his little friend was all swollen and discolored. To say that I was a little worried is the understatement of the year. We immediately called his doctor and were instructed to head to the ER at Primary Children’s Hospital. Grandma and Grandpa came and picked up the girls and after consoling a very worried Hailey (she somehow thought that she had somehow caused whatever was wrong with Jack) we were off. It was a rather nervous drive.
Once we arrived at the hospital and had informed the nurse at the desk about his symptoms, we were rushed to the front of the line and were whisked into a back room in front of a whole waiting room full of sick kids. This didn’t do much for my nerves and we quickly realized that the problem was rather serious. After several doctors looked him over we were informed that it was most likely a testicular torsion. This is basically a condition where the testicle gets twisted and cuts off the blood supply. We were told that if the blood had been cut off for long enough, there was a possibility that he might loose it. Urology was called, Jack was given an IV in his head (Emily didn’t like that part) and an operating room was prepared.
Within an hour of arriving at the hospital, Jack was in surgery. Emily and I nervously waited in one of the many waiting rooms and tried not to think about the “worst case scenarios” that were always a possibility with any surgery. Emily read wall posters and I played my Nintendo DS to keep from worrying ourselves sick. As we waited we both realized that things could always be worse though as we listened to a couple from Boise talk to their parents about the details of their 3 day old daughters ongoing heart surgery. It would be hard to work at a place like Primary Children’s. After about an hour of waiting the doctor called from the OR and let us know that the problem had actually been a hernia and not a testicular torsion like they had initially thought. He let us know that they had little Jack all fixed up and were getting ready to move him to recovery. We both breathed a sigh of relief.
From this point the story gets a little boring. They took us up to his room where they kept him for observation over night. All three girls spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa’s house and Emily and I did our best to share a fold out cot. It was far from the best night of sleep I’ve ever had. Jack was a trooper and slept all night as the nurses frequently came in to check his vitals and make sure that he was coming out of the anesthetic. They watched him all day and around 4 pm today, decided that he was ok to come home. He’s in a little pain from the two incisions they made in his groin, but for the most part he’s been his regular happy self for most of the day. We got him home around 6:30 and are glad to be back home with everyone happy and relatively healthy. It’s unfortunate that it sometimes takes something like this to make you remember how valuable your family is to you, but we’re all hyper aware of that fact today. We’re just super grateful for such a supportive family and for the fact that we live so close to a facility as great as Primary Children’s Hospital. We’ve included a few phone shots of our little trooper below…
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