a battery of surgeries

Damonito has had five major surgeries. His biggest surgery wasn't even the most distressing. Although his brain surgery was scary and huge he came through it like a trooper and recovered rapidly. It was his tonsils, outpatient for most people, that caused the greatest stress.

He had an anaphylactic reaction which caused seizures which caused unresponsiveness for several days while we had no idea whether he was going to pull out of it or not.


So when Nicole texted me on Wednesday to tell me that Damonito was having surgery on Friday to change his VNS battery that had gone dead, I was more than a little concerned.
I had a huge knot in my stomach when the intern said "this will be a walk in the park compared to his other surgeries." Yea. We'd heard that before.

The upshot is, the surgery went well. Damonito did great. He's home. He's happy. And he has a new battery for his VNS that is tiny compared to the last one he had.

tough tired

Nicole and I have been trying to work out my phone troubles for a couple of months. The "troubles" are that I can't receive photos from just anyone on my phone. Well, a more accurate statement would be that my phone service doesn't allow photos over a certain size. Nicole figured this out and my first test photo was a photo of Damonito sleeping, with the caption "tough day at school."
Later, I was talking to Damon and I asked him about Damonito's rough day. He seemed confused and was explaining that Damonito's school had brought in a truckload of snow for the kids and that he had played all day. I mentioned to Damon that Nicole had sent me this photo, Damonito was sleeping, with the caption, and I assumed he was sleeping because he'd had a "tough day" of seizures at school. Still confused, Damon asked Nicole while I was on the phone and it occurred to all of us at about the same time that what Nicole had meant was that Damonito had had a "tough day of play" at school and he had passed out from being tired when he got home.
A "tough day" had always meant a bad seizure day to me, so it was nice to have a "tough day" just mean a long, tiring day. Personally, I'm hoping for a lot more of tough/tired days.