Day Three of Rees' Surgery

Today was a good day in a lot of ways.  Rees had several small victories that are necessary for his healing and ultimate release from the hospital.  He got up and walked around a few times.  We would take him for a walk in the halls and he would walk down and then back up the hall before returning to his room.  This was great!!  We were very proud of this accomplishment!

He also went to the bathroom several times and after a little interventional assistance, he DID poop!  Yep, you read that correctly ... I actually typed the word 'poop' ... this was a serious WIN for the team!!  HOORAY Rees!!  He moved into other foods besides popsicles too.  He had the universal healing food ... Chicken Noodle Soup (YUM!) and he had a bit of jello.  Although he doesn't really have a food restriction anymore, we can tell that his teeth and palate may hurt, but are definitely sensitive by the way that he ate these things.  In addition to the other things mentioned in the previous posts about what was done inside Rees' skull, ... brace yourself ... his palate had to be broken.  Remember how it was explained that Rees' eyes and skull were actually moved inward?  Well, when this is done, the palate also has to be broken to accommodate the shift, which in turn also causes a gap between his two primary front teeth.  This VERY SAME THING was done with Molly's first surgery and a very BIG PLUS to this is that she has the most beautifully straight teeth now (without the help of orthodontics).  So it's just another upside to the difficult surgeries they have to go through.

The 'downer' of the day is that Rees' eyes are VERY SWOLLEN and he is unable to open them at all.  We now realize that he must have actually been able to see at least slightly yesterday; maybe the eyes were open just barely because he was able to maneuver and guage our movements better.  Today, he has had to completely rely on us for EVERYTHING.  When he has been up walking, he very noticeably cannot tell the direction of things.  We need to communicate very clearly to him so he knows which way to move, when to open his mouth, when we are going to touch him and where.  We can tell he was a little more frustrated about this.

We did have a nice break in the day when our neighbors came by for a visit.  It was great to spend a little time with them and Rees was very content being held by Joyce for quite a while.  We were so blessed to be able to leave the room for a bit to get some lunch and when we returned they prayed for us before leaving so they could go get ready to have our other "littles" spend the night with them so that both Mama AND Baba could stay with Rees together at night.  It is a challenge with only one of us here since Rees wants to be held so much.  He prefers to be with one of us in the chair as opposed to laying in his bed by himself.  This probably has a lot to do with the fact that he cannot see so he is relying heavily on "touch" to keep him calm, comfortable and content.

With Rees' eyes being so swollen, the surgeon recommended we put warm compresses on his eyes.  One of his eyes has a lot of what I call "yellow gunk" (I know, nice medical terminology) and the other eye is pretty caked with blood from when it was draining so much the first day.  The compresses would aid in loosening up the blood and 'gunk' and then hopefully he could attempt to open them.  He was not thrilled to have us do this as his eyes are what seem to be what bother him the most.  If we ask him if his head hurts, he says "no".  If we ask him if his nose hurts, he says "no".  But if we ask him if his eyes hurt, he immediately nods to the affirmative.  So, after attempting to do this a few times with him getting more and more agitated, I simply asked him if he wanted the nurse to do it instead of mama ... I said "I can go get the nurse right now if you'd rather her do it instead of mama" ... I'm so mean ... but that seemed to do the trick.  We have been able to get a noticeable amount of 'gunk' off his eyes, though he has not been able to open them just yet.  Maybe tomorrow.

So, here's something incredibly interesting ... We just discovered today that Rees has a pretty significant scar on the back of his head that we did not know about before.  You can see it in the photo below.  Interestingly, one of his reports from China stated he had to have stitches on a gash on his face about two years ago.  We thought that was really strange as he didn't have any scars of signs of having stitches anywhere on his face.  We guess they meant the back of his head ???

And, I'll end this post with a little bit of humor and delight.  If you recall this photo from Rees' CT scan, you'll see that right above the center of Rees' teeth there was a small opening where a "cleft" was starting and just above that opening was a tooth ... yes, actual tooth ... a floater tooth.

When the surgeon removed all that bone from the middle of his face, he also removed the floater tooth ... and we get to keep it as a souvenir!!!

Check it out!  It's an actual bicuspid with roots and all!!

To top that off, the really sweet thing is that they OR Staff gave Rees a little certificate that says "The Tooth Fairy visits the Operating Room for REES!"  And they even gave him a few dollars as tooth fairy money!  

We've really been blessed with excellent doctors, nurses, care partners and even housekeeping staff ... we are so thankful for the great care that everyone has been taking of Rees and even us.  They are so attentive and helpful and do all that they can to make our time here as comfortable and pleasing as it can be.  

**Tomorrow, we're hoping to report that our little guy has opened his eyes!!  

Again, we thank you ... so many of you ... for all your prayers and words of encouragement.  It has made such a difference to each day!  Thank-you ... so much ... Good Night, God BLESS ...