Home!

Just a quick post to let everyone know that we are home. Evan was discharged this morning and we were home and settled by lunch time. He is doing great! He is handling the pain much better today and we have been able to go for longer intervals between pain meds (which is great because they make him nauseous).

He is still running low grade fevers, but the surgeons feel that this is most likely due to a lack of deep breathing following surgery. As strange as it sounds, it is actually quite common after surgery for people to avoid taking the deep, cleansing breaths that help to expand the small air sacs within the lungs. After surgery (especially if you've had a breathing tube down your throat), taking a deep breath can often be painful. If you don't take these deep breaths however, the lungs never fully expand and this can often lead to infection/lung complications or increased temperatures. To be quite honest, it sounded a bit crazy to me at first, but after observing Evan breathe yesterday, I realized that this is likely the cause. We started doing some "incentive spirometry" (aka, deep breathing) with Evan yesterday and are continuing to work on it at home. Because he is 3 and, at times, very stubborn, we have had to get creative when it comes to getting him to take deep breaths. Right now we are having him blow bubbles and blow on party favors (you know, the annoying ones that extend and make noise when you blow into them). Hopefully we will see the fevers leave within the next day or two. If they don't we will have to take his casts off and inspect his wounds for possible infections and we really don't want to have to do that, so hopefully these "cleansing breaths" do him some good!

He is sleeping peacefully on a mattress in the living room at the moment (there is no way I am going to put him back in with the boys right now. . .they are just too rough and too curious). He is so happy to be home . I am already amazed at how quickly he is bouncing back from this surgery. We will go back to see the orthopedist sometime later this week to close his casts (they are currently split on the sides to allow for swelling) and the plan is to keep him in these long casts for 3-4 weeks. Here's hoping that everything goes according to plan for once!

Thank you again to all of you who have been keeping our family in your thoughts and prayers. We appreciate each and every one of you so much!