Surgery Day: The One Year Anniversary

11 min read

In two weeks we will be at the one year anniversary of Beckett’s first surgery. And as much as I hate to admit it, I think it’s taken me most of the year to process it.

If you’ve talked to me in person about it, there is a good chance my tone was light.

“Oh my goodness it was so hard. But we’re doing good now.”
“Yes, worst thing ever. Sooo happy to be on the other side of it!”
“Beck was so brave. I was a mess, but we made it! Woo!”

Tiny slivers of truth (It was hard. I was a mess.) but nothing to let the full weight of what we had just experienced out in the open.  

Here’s the thing about me.

I grew up with a steady stream of chaos. Not the screaming type or the overwhelming kind, but the quiet kind. The kind that doesn’t have an end date. The kind where you doubt everything will ever be ok again.

Imagine a smoke machine that spills out just enough smoke to cover the ground.  At eye level everything looks normal…but no one knows I can’t see my feet. Or if there is even ground underneath me. Because of that, I learned to be a “put your head down and survive the chaos” type person. Don’t look at the chaos. Don’t acknowledge that it’s happening or that you feel like you’re dying. Just don’t stop moving. Eventually you will reach the other side.

This is a benefit. Because when you’re in the middle of a shit storm- you have less of those- “ohmygawd I am not gonna make it” breakdowns. But the downside is that later, all the feelings you stuffed down, bubble to the surface. And if you want to keep moving forward you gotta scrape that shit off.

So here it is. Everything that got stuffed down 1 year ago.

This is the story of Becks First Surgery.

---

I can handle myself in the weeks leading up to surgery. Business as usual for me. Ben has his hardest days in the week or two before it’s go time. The anxiety for him hits early.

The day before surgery is a travel day and two things happen.

As the miles tick by, Ben gets gradually stronger, he becomes more and more of the rock that we all need. This is important- because as the miles pass below me, I start to crumble. I literally feel sick to my stomach the closer we get.

By the time we check into the hotel Ben is ready. His main objective is to keep everyone laughing until bedtime, and then get to the hospital on time for check in. My focus is different. My job is to make sure Beck stops eating at the right time, calculate the sleep and feed times based off of surgery, and the most important- try not to throw up.

The night before surgery was a straight up miracle. Like, Jesus himself must’ve held Beck because he slept all night, through the drive to the hospital, and through the check in. When he woke up, he was about 15 minutes away from being taken into the operating room.

This was amazing because he wouldn’t be allowed to eat if he had woken up earlier. And I don’t know if you’ve ever dealt with a hungry Reece Boy but… it ain’t pretty.

The vomit feeling in my stomach intensified when they asked us to dress our 6 month old baby in a loony toons hospital gown.

The smallest gown you’ve ever seen and it was still too big for him. On top of that, Beck was as happy as can be. I just kept thinking, “he has no idea what’s coming” and praying to God that was a good thing.

Then about 8 doctors, a handful of students, anesthesiologists, and several nurses took turns talking. Each one thought it was a regular day. But they had no idea. (In Beckett’s second surgery the anesthesiologist actually told us it’s not a big deal, they have no idea what’s happening, but that it will “look like he’s dying while he inhales his sleep medicine”….um, not helpful, lady.)

Finally, it’s time. The nurse came in and told us to say our “goodbyes”. We hugged and kissed our Entire World and solidified the image of his perfect little cleft in our minds.

How do you even begin to say goodbye to your babies face? The face that you’ve kissed and bathed and loved since the second you saw it. And how do you brace yourself for a new one? We watched the nurse walk down the hall and saw his little head was bobbing up and down.

This is when I lose it. I can’t breathe. Standing is impossible.

I wandered through what feels like a million hallways bawling- trying to find my way back to the waiting room. The nurses each stepped to the side of the hallway watching like this wasn’t the worst day on the planet.

Now having been through this twice, I know this to be Phase 3.

Phase 1 is the night before surgery.
Phase 2 is everything from when we wake up to when we hand him off.
Phase 3 is the wait.

You sweat a lot during phase 3. But your hands and feet are freezing. You’re exhausted and you need to sit down, but your legs say that you should move. There are three floors. You walk up and down and though hallways and into different waiting rooms. But you always find your way back to Floor 1.

The green benches line the entire waiting room and they are anything but comfortable. But that’s where you want to be. You want a quick update. But not too quick because that could mean something is wrong.

During phase three there are two sides of my brain that argue constantly.

The logical part says that there is no safer place for my baby. He is hooked up to machines that track his everything and he is surrounded by doctors whose only focus is his safety and wellbeing. But the mom part of my brain says that what he actually needs is me and the sooner they call us back- the better.

This part of the day is hard. Waiting. Being exhausted but also wired like never before takes it’s toll. The weirdest part about this is that this is the most rest we’ll have for a long time. We are allowed to be numb during this part. Because there is nothing else we can do.

But what’s coming will take everything we have.

Finally- almost 7 hours later, they tell us he is moving to recovery, but we can’t go back until he is stable. The pit in my stomach is churning because I know he is going to wake up without me. The nurses say not to worry because babies don’t know what’s going on and that he won’t remember… but I know he’ll know. And from where I’m sitting right now- I can tell you he definitely remembered.

When he’s in the clear, they let one parent back into recovery. I went and Ben moved all our things into our room for the night. It was hard not to sprint, I walked alongside the nurse instead.

I got to see his new lip first. So many parents describe it as a happy moment, but either they’re lying- or I did it wrong. Because it was awful.

I heard him whimpering before I even knew what bed he was in. And when I saw him, I saw his eyes. He was terrified and confused.

He looked like he had spent a full 10 rounds in the ring with the best on earth. I will never, ever forget that moment. I felt my whole heart break. That rock that sits at the back of your throat and threatens to break you into a million pieces was resting on the edge of a gigantic cliff. I could feel his fear in my finger tips. The sounds he was making still makes me cringe to this day. Soft and gentle cries that sound like exhaustion and confusion and fear all in one. It was one of the scariest moments of my life.

I felt like a failure- because how could I let this happen. And how could I not force them to let me be there when he needed me the most. And will he ever forgive me? And… and…and.

The next phase is where the mom strength shows up. It is one of the most incredible and logic defying experiences. When you have absolutely nothing left and your body and brain say that you can’t handle anything in front of you- there’s a reserve.

This intense and powerful energy comes from the deepest part of your being and covers your baby and re-engages your brain.

It’s go time. Now that he’s with me, there is nothing I can’t handle.

They moved us up to our room and Ben saw Becks new lip for the first time. We all cried and took a deep breath. The “hard” part is over. Except that there’s so much more ahead.

The night after surgery is like having a brand new baby- you don’t sleep. And instead of cuddling your new addition, you clean stitches and try to convince them to take medicine and milk through their freshly stitched face.

At this point I’m riding high on mom strength and I almost don’t feel how scary all of it is. I say “mom strength” because I’m the one writing this- but I believe a parents love can actually move mountains. Ben stayed up all night too, he stood behind me and literally held me up when I had been rocking Beck for so long I could feel everything giving out, and then drove us across the pass and all the way home on less than zero hours of sleep.  

Post surgery, Beck was traumatized. I could tell he was scared and confused about what had happened. When we finally made it home, he tried to smile when he saw his room. Ben and I took the first real deep breath in days.

It was a small sliver of hope. And he felt it- safety. Finally. 

The last phase is the most grueling. The first phases are uphill, mile long, sprints. They hurt so bad but you move through them semi quickly. The last phase is a marathon. And there’s a slight incline the whole way through.

Recovery is so much more than waiting for the stitches to close. It’s keeping his stint clear from blood and having to pin him down twice a day to shoot saline up his nose- one of the most tender parts of his face. It’s cleaning the stitches.

It’s needing to see him smile and hear him laugh.

It’s praying that he’s eating enough and progressing well. It’s hoping that you’re putting enough Vaseline on the scar he’ll have for the rest of his life. It’s sleeping in the recliner for weeks, waking up with a blood soaked shirt and arguing with your husband because you’re both at the end of everything.

After his first surgery, his lip healed almost magically. That tricked our brain into thinking that he was completely healed. But it took months for him to sleep regularly again. One of the worst parts was feeling him sad, almost depressed. And it took a long time until he trusted Ben and I again. Which is the most awful feeling as a parent.

I started to write about how we are thankful that Becks surgery was not a life threatening one and how all in all, our baby is healthy and happy and that we’re thankful. Which we are. But I have the bad habit of convincing myself that because someone else experienced something hard- it makes mine less hard.

But here is what I’m learning.

You can’t heal if you pretend the wound isn’t there.

I can’t heal my broken spots by pointing to someone else’s and saying “yours is worse, so mine feels fine”.

It might sound silly, but it is a big lesson I’m learning.

I write all this to say, if your head is down and you are working through the quiet and unassuming kind of chaos, I feel for you. I’ve been there and it’s not fun.

And if you’re in one of those mile long uphill sprints – I feel for you. Hold on for dear life and I promise you’ll make it through

And if you’re in one of those marathon kind of races where the gradual incline is sneaky and you don’t know when or where it will end- I feel for you. And I hope you find that you are so much stronger than you ever thought.

Wherever it is that you’re standing, I’m encouraging you to engage and trust that whatever race you’re in… you are exactly what you need to be, just as you are. And you have exactly what you need inside of you to come through stronger on the other side.

And lastly, I’m here to remind you that when the dust settles, acknowledge the wounds so that you can heal from them.

You might have a scar, but who cares. Some of the most perfect humans I know have scars. It shows the world that you’re a warrior and that you’re not to be messed with.