St Paul Hospital

I guess I'm going for the Bad Blogger Award again. I looked at the blog this morning and realized I never even posted anything about Zeke's appointments. It's 6am and I've helped Zeke go to the bathroom and chased Anthony back to bed so if there are no further interuptions for a few minutes, I'll tell you about the doctor visits. Pictures later. Brittney stole the card out of my phone or I would have posted them now.
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We arrived at Gillette Children's Hospital around 10:30am. I got Zeke checked in and signed our life away againg. They gave us a buzzer kind of like what you get when you're waiting in line at Olive Garden. Because they have us set up to see so many different people during the day, we check into each area when we're finished with the previous appointment and then when the buzzer goes off, we know it's time to see the next doctor.
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Since we were few minutes early for our first appointment at 11:15am, we decided to try and find a friend who was having surgery at 11am. We went down to the 3rd floor surgery waiting room to see if we could find them but they were still back in the pre-op area. I was so disappointed that we missed them. Ryan was one of Zeke's buddies when we were in that Hospital for 7 weeks a few years ago. His parents, especially his mom, became a good friend while we were there. Ryan just happened to have a shunt revision surgery scheduled for the same day we were there. Since we couldn't find them, we went back up to the main waiting room to wait for our buzzer to go off.
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They called us in around 11 to get Zeke's casts taken off. We had the same awesome doctor that had been in the room to put them on. Zeke watched cartoons while the guy buzzed the casts off. After they were off, Zeke took one look at the cuts on his knees and said, "WHAT HAPPENED!" I had to explain the surgery to him again. I think it makes more sense now :) The doctor washed off Zekes legs/feet and sent us to our next appointment. I think the whole process took about 20 minutes.
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The next stop was for X-rays. Even though they were really good, it still took a while just because of how many X-rays they had to take. They had to have pictures of each of Zeke's feet, ankles, knees and legs and lots of different angles. Because he wasn't used to moving/bending his knees, sometimes I had to hold his legs and feet in certain positions while they took the pictures. We got out of there around 12:15.
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As we were coming out of X-rays, we literally ran into Ryan's parent's, who were looking for us! It was so great to see them and chat with them for a while. After a bit of catching up and a few pictures, their buzzer went off and we had to continue on to the next appointment.
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Four kids awake and counting. We'll see how much more I can get written.
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We continued on to the Height & Weight Department. Because Zeke couldn't stand, I lifted him onto a table. He is 4 ft 2 inches tall and weighs 65lbs. That area only takes a few minutes if you get right in. I think we were out of there by 12:30pm
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Then we were off to Blue 4, which was the main surgeon. First her nurse came in and asked us questions. Then an intern joined us and the two of them took off all the surgical tape that still covered Zeke's incisions. They looked over the X-rays and the incisions and declared that everything was healing well. Zeke didn't care much for the tape coming off. Think of wearing a bunch of big band-aids for a month and then someone pulling all of them off. He didn't scream or anything but he made it known that he wasn't happy with us! The most interesting part was when they pulled out the pin in his foot. Basically, the nurse held up a towel so that Zeke couldn't see what was going on and the other doctor got his big pliers ready. While the nurse held the towel and Zeke's foot, the doctor just grabbed the end of the pin with his pliers and pulled. It only took a second and it was out. Zeke winced and said, "Ow."
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Once they were done and had wrapped Zeke's foot where the pin had come out, the main surgeon and her people came in. She checked everything, talked to me for a few minutes, asked if we had any other questions and then sent us on to the next area. It took a bit longer than it appears in writing but I won't bore you with the details....yet.
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Even though the casts are off, Zeke still needs a lot of support in is feet and legs. When we were at the hospital 4 weeks ago, they took molds of Zeke's feet for new braces. Our next stop was in the orthodics department. And that's where we hit a bit of a standstill.
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I'll finish this story later.  Too many kids clammoring for my attention for me to be able to form a cohesive thought.
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