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Switch On - Part 1 of 2
The first night with Oli was a bit bumpy. He did sleep, but he was uncomfortable and he did scream a bit. The most awful thing about it all was trying to get the antibiotics into him. Why do they make children’s medicine taste so bad?
Sunday during the day he was pretty much back to his normal self, other than the tight bandage around his head and the swelling. We were so careful, we built a whole pillow fort around him on the floor so that if he happened to fall over he wouldn’t knock his head.
On Monday, the 18th of May, we went to see Dr Naude, the surgeon, and she removed his compression bandage. It was not something that he enjoyed as she had to push a bit on his forehead to get the scissors under the bandage. Poor thing, you could see the relief when the bandage was off.
I didn’t know how I was going to feel when I saw his implants for the first time. At 6 months, Oli still didn’t have much hair. I remember seeing the black pen marks on his head, which the surgeon apologised for. Of course, something like that doesn’t phase me at all. She was marking exactly where she wanted the implant. She was just doing her job.
His head was initially still very swollen but you could see them. You could see the implants under his skin on either side of his head. The surgeon asked us to please not push on the implants and to leave the bandage on the incision till we see her next week. Obviously, it went without saying that we didn’t want him to knock his head either. The implants are rather robust and he has knocked them before BUT not right after he received them.
We went back to Hopefield, about an hour and half away from the doctor, after that appointment. Oli was, at the time, our surgeons youngest patient that she had ever implanted. As I said in a previous post, the implants are small, but his head, which was big according to the green line in his clinic book, was still a baby head. I was just so grateful the surgery was over, but then came the concern of making sure he didn’t fall on his head. He was learning to crawl and so was moving a lot and rolling, pulling himself up and losing his balance. Daniel and I were nervous wrecks!
In the early hours of Friday morning, May 22nd, Oli woke up and just wouldn’t settle and he was cold. Cold and shivering. I called Dr Naude at about 2:30am and she said she will arrange with the ER that we go straight through to the paediatric ward, leave now. As this was in the middle of COVID, she didn’t want us hanging around in the ER. The Dr’s concern at this point in time was possible meningitis. I called my mom to let her know that we were leaving and she came to quickly say goodbye. While she was trying to settle Oli he threw up on her, one massive vomit, a mixture of blood and snot and saliva and then settled down completely.
He settled down so much that he slept all the way to the hospital and the whole time we were there. He had blood tests done, the paediatrician checked him out, the ENT surgeon checked him out and he was absolutely fine. We were shattered but so relieved that he was fine.
Join us next week to for Switch On Part 2 of 2.