I have been trying to write about this for a while but it’s sort of just become a non issue now that the day has been and gone. So I’ll just write about it quickly. I think I can do that!?
We stayed in a hotel because we had a 7am check in with a 7 hour fast. We thought it would be better but we were very very wrong. We really should have known because Jaxon wont sleep anywhere but his cot. So that’s exactly what he did. Or didn’t do. He finally gave up the ghost at 2am. The hotel was hot and it was a raining muggy night with air conditioning that barely worked. So we had a window open and at 3.30am a very loud and obnoxious bird woke Jaxon up again. That was the end of any hope of sleep we had. We left for the hospital early and decided to kill some time in peak hour traffic. Joy.
I can not praise the hospital enough for the day that we had. We really thought it was going to be awful for Jaxon but they had a great big play room with ride in cars and home corner’s and play stations. For the 20 minutes that we waited Jaxon test drove each and every one of the 7 little cars they had.
For me I think the worst thing was having to sign a form that said “I “the parent” am aware of all of the risks involved with this procedure” You know, like your child might die in the next two hours because of what we’re doing but since you signed this form, we got our asses covered. I’ve had to sign that same form I think 6 times now. It’s just a form, but it’s not just a form if you know what I mean?
The nurses were wonderful. But I don’t think either of them appreciated that when asked if Jaxon had any metal objects on his clothes that we both said “no, but we need to remove his penis ring” They just didn’t get it. But we just had to be making light of it all really or we would have gone mad!
Then came the hardest bit. I had to accompany Jaxon in to the MRI machine. We laid him down on the HUGE adult sized table with his head on a big plastic O ring and they put a teeny tiny gas mask over his mouth. Man. He was screaming at me and pleading with me. Mum, you’re meant to keep me safe is the look in a child’s eyes when something like that is being forced upon them. And he’s right. And that’s all I wanted to do. But the logical section of my brain made me hold his arms and legs down so he couldn’t rip the mask off. The logical part of my brain said it had to be done. Even though deep inside all I wanted to do was grab Jaxon and run. His eyes glazed over and his screams turned in to murmur’s as his eyes (intently looking to me for help) glazed over. Then he went limp and his eyes closed.
Have you ever put a dog to sleep?? That’s what kept running through my head as I left my silent son laying on a table with people who had made me sign his life away to them.That is the best way to describe to you what it’s like to “put your son to sleep” Even when I left the room and saw my Mum and Tim sitting there, the sympathy in their eyes for me having to do that was exactly the same as if I had just left the room at the vets without my long time family pet.
I stayed cool, calm and collected for all of two seconds once I’d left the room. I fell to pieces in Tims arms. I thought I had it all under control right up until I saw Tim and then I lost it. Nothing a bottle of coke and a great big chunk of vanilla slice wont fix.
The wait was 2.5 hours but it didn’t really seem that long. I think the hardest thing about all of this has been the actual wait. Once it was all starting to happen and once we knew we were one step closer to finding out some real answer’s (which we got today, will post later) we just felt relief.
So they came and got us and took us to the recovery room. Jaxon was snug as a bug in a rug laying on a bed with his little heart monitor going. He was still out like a light and looked ever so precious and fragile so the nurses spoke to us for a little. One was a student nurse and she was getting told (get this!) that I was a “darling mother” because she’d told me not to touch him or pick him up and I didn’t. A lot of mother’s just rush in and ignore what the nurses say even though they say it because doing that scares the child when they wake up.
When he finally woke up he snuggled in my arms, he drank 200 mil of milk (he normally has 20 mil, he was HUNGRY!) and a tub of pears and something else which has just totally slipped my mind (a bottle of apple juice). Let’s just say he ate like a normal 22 month old would eat on a normal day in a single sitting! Except that meant he ate four times what he would normally eat!
So we went home and Jaxon doesn’t remember a single thing. He’s never going to remember these things which is a real blessing. The fast was easy, but having him look in my eyes for me to protect him was really hard, because that’s exactly what mother’s do and thats exactly what I wanted to do. So I am very glad that in 10 years he wont know this happened. He doesn’t even know it happened now.
These photo’s are. 1 and 2 are him in the recovery room. That little red mask is the gas mask. And then the one in my arms is when he just woke up and I got to hold him. You can sort of see the blue bandage that is holding his drip in his arm. The nurse was kind of funny. She said to me when he woke up “If you’re strong enough you can cuddle him back to his room” and I was thinking “Lady, I could hold him for a week if I had to”
We got the results today so I will post them here tomorrow.
This is the first time Jaxon has ever fallen asleep at the table. I don’t think he even slept on the boob for those few short weeks we got to breast feed.
So it stays, as a milestone post 
