Lucas Camilo

Lucas wants everyone to know… “the surgery went well!”

Yesterday began at 5 am when we made coffee and started mobilizing for Children’s. The morning went pretty smoothly and it was only right when we prepared to say bye to Lucas and leave him alone with the anesthesiologists that he got very nervous… but then the drugs kicked in and he was out, and we were pushed out of the room as I futilely tried to reiterate suctioning instructions one last time.

Getting ready for anesthesia

Then we had to wait. It turns out the actual surgery didn’t start until around 10 am, as it took a while for full sedation to kick in and to get him in the right position. At around 2 pm we got a message that surgery was wrapping up, and soon after that the surgeon came out to let us know everything had gone as planned. Among the things we learned is that they used the longest rods in stock to support the fusion of the vertebrae. In other words, Lucas is really tall! And, now he’ll have long pieces of titanium inside his body keeping his torso straight and aligned.  We also learned that he lost a lot of blood (as expected in major surgery) but that they hadn’t yet done a transfusion… thought later in the evening his red blood cells were still low so they did end up doing a transfusion.

We made our way to the ICU and soon Lucas was rolling in on a gurney with a team of doctors and nurses in tow. He was still out, a good things since they hadn’t yet changed him back to his regular trach. Lucas’s biggest concern when talking to the team pre-operation was that he would wake up and still have the hospital-issue cuffed trach in place, preventing him from using his voice. Fortunately, and with some encouragement from us, they changed it out just before his eyes starting to pry open, and he groaned out his first words… “is it over?!?”

Lucas was groggy for the rest of the afternoon but surprised us by having enough energy to immediate start bossing us and his nurses around, making sure he had everything he needed. As many people know, Lucas is obsessed with doing the daily Wordle and managed to do it at 6:30 am before heading back to surgery. The word was “sassy” which suddenly seemed fitting given his unexpectedly spunky behavior coming out of surgery.

Watching a documentary about The Clash

Meanwhile, the drugs kept flowing, helping to mitigate the pain. But the hardest thing for Lucas was the discomfort of having so much connected to his body: tubes draining excess blood from his back, multiple IV lines in his veins, various wires stuck to his body monitoring heart rate, blood oxygenation, etc, a blood pressure cuff inflating every 15 minutes, a foley catheter, and of course his ventilator tube connected to an unfamiliar suction device. On top of it all, nurses and other medical personnel enter the room every 15 minutes to monitor various things. Finally, he also couldn’t lie fully on one side, which is his preferred position for sleep. So needless to say, it was a rough night… by 5 am he gave up on sleeping and requested his audiobook. We’ve been up ever since.

Still, he’s been an amazing sport. Very little complaining despite all the inconveniences. And he’s managed to charm his nurses and respiratory therapists with all his jokes and handsomeness.

As always, we appreciate all the messages of love and encouragement, not to mention all the other ways people have supported us. It was a stressful day but we’re so relieved and grateful to (hopefully) be through the worst of it.