Hospital Trip - Part 1

It's hard to believe it's only been a week since having to take Kristjan to the hospital. It feels like it was just yesterday. I think Pete and I are still trying to recover from the exhaustion of all of it. Last Tuesday evening before bedtime, Kristjan started complaining that his 'tummy hurt'. We just assumed it was something he ate or maybe gas, and told him he'd feel better in the morning. 5am the next morning, Kristjan was crying out to me for help. I bolted into his room. His pain was worse. He needed help out of bed and to walk to the bathroom. Since the pain was in the lower right abdomen, all I kept thinking was that it was his appendix. And come to find out, he threw up twice during the night (another sign leaning to appendicitis). As soon as 8am rolled around, I called the doctor's office for an appointment. Typically, Dr. Hoing is very hard to get a same-day appointment, but somehow, she was available that morning. Kristjan and I left the house at 9:30am....and never went back. We basically spent the rest of the entire day and evening in doctor/hospital offices. When we saw Dr. Hoing, she sent us across the hall to get a blood sample, urine sample, and xray. She then examined Kristjan and said in her opinion this was textbook appendicitis. She then sent us to Kirkland to get an ultrasound to confirm. By this time, I picked Pete up from work. After waiting and waiting, Dr.Hoing called us with the ultrasound results and told us to head to the hospital. We were at Evergreen Hospital for HOURS before the doctor came in to tell us unfortunately we'd have to go to Children's in Seattle because our hospital don't perform such surgery on children 8 years and under. It's now after 5pm, which meant rush hour traffic. We took took the toll bridge (bill should come soon in the mail for that!) to get there quicker. We went through the same routine at Children's..some paperwork, retelling what happened, waiting, waiting, and more waiting to get into surgery. Pete left the hospital at 7:30pm to go home. He needed to take Clifford to our neighbors for the night and put together a hospital bag for us. After 9pm, Kristjan finally goes into surgery. Again, more waiting. Pete came back to the hospital after 10pm. The surgeon finally comes in to talk with us. All went well. The surgery took 20 minutes. They went in through his belly button. We just had to wait for Kristjan to wake up. Given it's past 11pm, and we know Kristjan himself was exhausted from all of this AND the sedatives, he never really woke up. It wasn't until after midnight when we were taken into a room with him to sleep. Peter and I were emotionally and physically drained from dealing with the various doctors, the traveling, the lack of food, all the phone calls/texts we needed to make, the arrangements for Clifford, etc etc etc. BUT we're so grateful to have caught this early, so no need to worry about complications. Thursday morning Kristjan slowly started to act like his normal self. By late afternoon, we were finally discharged and ready to head home. Here are the pics we took chronicling this adventure. You can see in the first few pics Kristjan is all happy and silly...but by the end of the day, you can see a difference. Poor boy