Lucas Camilo

It’s been 4 days since Lucas emerged from the spinal fusion surgery and he’s just about ready to go home.

We’ve definitely had some ups and downs over the last 24 hours. Lucas had a rough night of sleep on Thursday so when the wheelchair tech along with physical and occupational therapists busted into our room at 9:30 am on Friday he had barely done his morning Wordle and was not at all happy about their suggestion that it was time to get up in his chair. But he didn’t have much choice, and so after dealing with a broken ceiling lift (further stressing Lucas out), all four of us managed to get long, lanky Lucas — with his newly straightened back — into his wheelchair for the first time since surgery. Some modifications had already been made, so the chair fit him OK, but it took some more tweaks before he started looking halfway comfortable sitting up. He lasted about 15 minutes, complaining the whole time — both about the pain and all the people running around messing with him and his wheelchair.

So, not a great first experience but it gave us hope that he’d last even longer the next time he got up. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Instead, attempt #2 that afternoon lasted less than 10 minutes; he complained that the pain was immediate and intense. After he got down, we couldn’t help feeling bad about rushing him to recover, and also discouraged about how far off the possibility of spending an hour in his wheelchair (which is necessary to get home) seemed.

Things started looking up again later that afternoon when a very cuddly service dog named Lucy came by to visit. Meanwhile, we heard from the medical team that Lucas had checked all the boxes for discharge… except for the big challenge of showing that he could sit up in his wheelchair for a sustained amount of time.

So this morning we gave it another shot. This time, right before getting up he got a dose of Oxycontin to mitigate the pain. The transfer from the bed was much smoother, and as soon as he was settled in his wheelchair we held our breath until he said, “The pain…” And we said “Oh no!” and he said, “… isn’t so bad this time!”

Sure enough, he lasted for 45 minutes and though the pain eventually kicked in he was still doing his daily Heardles when we suggested that he get down to rest. At that point we were hoping he could saving his energy for a ride home in the afternoon, but as we write the sun is headed quickly toward dusk and it seems like we’ll be here another night.

Thanks for the pictures, playlists, and message. Lucas is groggily taking it all in. It is such a sweet part of our job as parents, funneling all the love his way.