Jack's big surgery story!

Here is what has been going on with our little Jack Dennison. He's such a fighter and we appreciate the prayers that have been said in his behalf the last few days. I wrote this post and it took forever, and then it got deleted!! AHHH! So hopefully it works this time. :)

Friday: November 13th

Around 7:30 PM we were driving home from a good ol' trip to Wal*Mart. About half way home Jack started crying. Babies cry in the car all the time. No big deal. I tried to give him his binkie and he just wouldn't take it and was just screaming. We got home, and I got him out of his car seat, and got him to take his bink, and calm down a little bit. We got the other kids ready for bed, and said our family prayer and all that, and Dale and I went to our room with Jack. I tried to feed him, but he wouldn't eat, which was kind of weird for him. He was also breathing really weird. Like, if you've been crying a lot and can't catch your breath ya know? That's what he was doing. I talked to my mom on the phone around 9:40 ish and she asked if I put my hand on his tummy if it was going up and down with every breath. I hadn't really paid attention but once off the phone for a little bit decided to try and pay attention. Well, he would take his catch up breaths then his tummy would go up and down like 2-3 times, then not at all. I had Dale feel and he said it seemed that way too. That was weird. Then Jack started crying again (he was kind of randomly crying if we moved him or whatever but it only lasted for a second) and we noticed his mouth wasn't forming a perfect little O like it had been. His right side was a little droopy. After a minute or so of noticing and realizing that wasn't normal for him (I mean, we've only had him for 9 days, so we had to make sure we were right that it wasn't normal), we called the pediatrician around 10:15 PM. They said because of the way he was breathing (where his sterum is, it was going up and down, and that's not normal, it means he may not be getting enough oxygen), we needed to take him to the ER right then. I called my parents, and they were on their way down to be with the other kids. I ran to my visiting teachers house to see if she could be at the house until my parents got there. She didn't even hesitate, which was amazing. She's great. So we jetted out to the ER at the local hospital. It was really scary.

We got to the ER around 10:30 - 10:45 ish. They took his oxygen level, and it was normal. That was weird. The put us in an ER room, and had the doctor come look at him. The doctor just wasn't sure what to do, or why he was doing that. The droopiness in his face and his breathing problems were weird, and the fact that his oxygen level was fine was all strange. Another doctor came in, and the two decided that they would call Jack's pediatrician and see what he wanted to do. He said to send Jack to the Pediatric unit at the hospital to have further tests done.

Around 11:00 PM we were up at Pediatrics. They hooked him up to IV's and such b/c he hadn't eaten since 5 PM, and to some oxygen to help his breathing. The Pediatrician came in and wanted blood tests, urine tests done ASAP, and also to do a spinal tap. He was stumped too, so we were all hoping that something would come back. All blood tests came back normal. Which was good. They did the spinal tap (which Dale and I opted out of watching), and it had a little bit of blood in it. He said this could be because he hit a blood vessel when he went in with the needle or worse case, bleeding the brain. Since there was blood, he wanted to do a CT Scan to make sure there was nothing in the brain. Luckily for everyone, it went really quickly (there was no waiting and usually on a Friday night, there is tons). After a few minutes the doctor came in and told us some news that would change our lives! They found a good size blood clot in Jack's brain. It needed to be looked at immediately, and they were obviously concerned. Jack was to be life flighted to Primary Children's Medical Center (PCMC) as soon as life flight could make it down. The pediatric Nero Surgeons would meet him there, and do their stuff. He wasn't sure if they'd do another CT Scan or exactly what would be done. He told us that surgery was an option at this point, it was just going to depend. This was told to us around 3 AM. So we'd been in the Pediatric Unit for a while, and all this testing and getting Jack hooked up to various things took a while.

Saturday: November 14th

Pediatrician then tells us that life flight will be there as soon as possible. He was very kind and I appreciate his concern that was offered. Obviously it's not the kind of news we expected at all at 7:30 Friday night while driving home with a crying baby. The nurses told us that if we sat down close to Jacks little crib, we could hold him for a little while until they got there. When they did, the nurses would be hooking him up to all of their things, and then he'd be taken in the helicopter to PCMC. Even though they didn't tell us, we knew that we had no idea when we'd hold our baby again. It was such a bitter sweet moment. It was so so sad to see my baby hooked up to so many things, and still struggling to breath some. So hard. I was totally feeling for all those parents and friends I've known that have had babies in the NICU and other problems. I never imagined (as I think most parents don't) that we'd be there waiting for Life Flight to take my baby as quickly as possible to a children's hospital. Dale and I switched off holding him, and crying today. Dale called our parents to tell them our shocking news. Life Flight got there around 4:00 -4:30 AM and we set our baby down and they started their process. We left the room while they put a breathing tube in. This was done originally as a precaution so if in flight he needed it, it was there, and they didn't have to do it while flying. I must say how grateful I am for the wonderful nurses that were there taking care of Jack. The Pediatric nurses were wonderful, and the the Life Flight nurses. I knew that he was in good hands and that they would take care of my baby for me. Once he was all hooked up the nurse asked if we'd like to walk with Jack to the helicopter and watch them take off. They didn't have any room for one of us to fly with them, but I think that was all right. We needed to go see the other kids before we went up to PCMC. We walked with our baby and the flight team and watched them put my baby, who was in an incubater, in the helicopter. The nurse opened the other door, and let us see where he would be and where they would be and let us know he would be all right. She had our phone number and reassured us that if they had any problems in flight they'd call and let us know. We went to our car and watched the helicopter take off. Yeah, that was a little hard. The other thing that hit me super hard was walking away from the hospital with Jack's car seat in hand and his little blanket that he always sleeps with. Yeah ... that was hard. Dale and I knew that he was in good hands and obviously where he needed to be.

We got home around 5:00 AM. We wanted to be the ones to tell the kids. We got a bag of clothes and other necessities together and then Dale woke the three kids up. We gathered them in our room, and proceeded to try to explain the best we could what was going on. We basically just told them that baby Jack had gone to the hospital b/c he had an owie inside his head. It was a really bad owie, so he had to ride in a helicopter to a special baby hospital. We told them that grandma would be staying with them, and a lot of people would be taking care of them. We asked them to be extra good while mom and dad were with baby Jack. Then we said a family prayer together. It was pretty emotional for me. I knew that it'd be a while before I saw them again. They were great though. Luckily for my mom, Spencer went back to sleep, lol. Unfortunately for my mom, the other two kids didn't. :) Sorry mom, lol. After lots of hugs and loves, Dale and I were off for PCMC!

It was now 5:45 AM when we started up there. We arrived at 6:45 AM. We got there in just enough time to see our baby as he was coming back from his CT Scan, and headed to his room. They brought us all to his room. From 7 AM -8 AM every day there are no visitors allowed since it's shift change, and lots goes on and it's hard to explain ... yeah. So after a few minutes we were kicked out. It was good for us though. Since it was now a decent hour, it was time to call brothers and sisters to let them know where we were with Jack, and why. After everyone had been called we went to the cafeteria and ate some breakfast. We were pretty hungry at this point, so it was good we were forced to take a break from our baby and eat, lol. We went back up at 8 AM and got to see him again. They kind of caught us up on what had been done since he'd gotten there (he got there at 5:30 AM), which honestly, wasn't much. More IV's, more tubes, more CT Scan, etc. Around 9 AM the Nero Surgeon came up and wanted to show us the two different CT Scans (the one from the hospital in Provo, and then the one they'd done here). From what they could tell, the clot had gotten a little bit bigger in the time between the the CT Scans. Obviously Jack is tiny. His head is tiny. His brain is tiny. The clot, is ... well, in reality it's tiny. But compared to his tiny brain, it's HUGE! It was about 1/4 of the size of his brain. Big thing in there. The Nero Surgeon explained to us that he would rather not do surgery on him. He is only 10 days old, and he never liked to do surgery on anyone that young. Blood clots usually go away on their own, so he decided that he wanted an MRI so we could make sure there wasn't any type of mass in there with the clot, that may have caused the clot. So, they were hoping to find out something to help them determine if they should do surgery or if they should let it go away on it's own. The MRI was done around 10 AM. It took a little while. So basically there was a period of more waiting. Once the MRI was done we just sat with Jack and waited some more. :) We asked our nurse if she noticed anything, just to get an idea of what had happened. She said she didn't see anything unusual, but obviously she doesn't always see what the doctor does. Around 1:30 PM (the doctor was in surgery all morning, so we had to wait until he was done to hear back about the MRI) the Nero Surgeon came in and told us that there wasn't a mass of any kind they could see. So in some ways the MRI wasn't helpful in making the decision of what to do. He said again that usually when this little he prefers not to do surgery, however, his guy kept telling him he needed to do it. So they would prep for surgery, which would be about 1 hour, then he'd be in surgery for around 2 hours. WOW! All right. It was a little bit crazy to think that our 10 day old baby was going to have brain surgery! Hello!! We were totally 100% okay with that choice. Our family all knew this was a possibility. So they were shocked I think, but weren't totally taken back. When telling our friends they were obviously a little bit more shocked (understandably so). I think for Dale and I, it was okay news. We were just glad to know what would be happening for him. We also had known since 3:00 AM that this was a possibility. We made some more calls (to family) and posted a lot of places -- mostly Facebook, and I posted in a few websites that I frequent (ha ha, that sounds kind of funny, and so secretive) and asked for prayers. Before too much hussle and bussle happened my dad (who we are so grateful for, he was able to spend the entire day with us yesterday) and Dale were able to give him a blessing. It was an amazing blessing and we are so grateful that they were able to do that. It was so comforting to hear those words and know that he would be protected and do well in surgery. Between that and the doctors confidence that this is what needed to be done, we knew our baby would be all right. Many people were in and out preparing him for surgery. We walked to OR with him and gave him some hugs and kisses before he left. We went to the OR waiting room with both my parents and my brother Andy (thank you again for being there). The time actually went pretty quickly. It ended up taking about 3 hours. Around 5:30 PM I was a little restless, but just before 6 PM the doctor came in and told us that everything went well. They got some tissue and blood and that was all sent off to the lab to be tested and make sure there wasn't anything in it or wrong with it to explain why it was even there (yeah, did I mention that we haven't know why this was even there). He said that he did need a blood transfusion while in surgery (which we knew was a high possibility, so not surprised there). Everything went well and he was pleased with what they did, and glad they did it. Off we were to wait for them to bring Jack back to his room. Doctor told us it'd be about 20 minutes until he was there. It took a little longer, of course, but they brought our cute little boy back. He was still under his anesthesia and out of it, but he looked good considering what he'd just gone through. He has a tube in his head, which drains the fluid that had been in there from his body not being able to drain it b/c of the placement of the clot. So he has a few stiches on the top of his head, and then on the back of his head/neck he has a few more where they went in (I haven't looked at it yet, so not sure how many are there) to get the clot. While he was in surgery, he was face down (since the clot was in the back, right side of his head), his little face was in a little horse shoe shaped pillow thing, so his face was super, super red from having it in that for 3 hours. It was great to see him, and know that things went well, and that he was good, all things considered. It got a little bit crazy around this time because we had a lot of visitors all at the exact same time! Lol. Sarah and Skyler came by which was SO, SO awesome! Thank you again you guys for coming. It made my heart So happy to see my cute niece Ella, who totally just gave me a hug when I asked, and the cutest smile. I am missing my other kids, so it was super perfect to see her cute face yesterday (for all those who don't know, Ella and Spencer are 1 month apart in age). It was also great to see Cole, so Sarah and Skyler, thank him again for coming and watching Ella, and for the food and all that! :) We really appreciate it and we're glad he was well enough to come! Some family friends of the Murri's stopped by with some goodies and to see how we were holding up. They came to see Jack for a couple minutes also. My parents also came in for a second before we got kicked out at 7 PM for shift change (again). My brother Andy was able to see Jack with us the first time we saw him post-op. So we had a lot of people in and out in that 1 hour. At 7 PM we went downstairs and ate some dinner (which again, we thank Cole for) which was so good (it'd been a while since I'd eaten, I didn't have much lunch, lol). We enjoyed dinner with my parents then just chatted until 8 PM. We headed back up to see Jack. The new nurse said that he looked good, and was hoping that he'd come out of his anesthesia pretty soon. With him being so small and young, they were kind of unsure how long it'd take him to do it. But they weren't worried yet. She also let us know they'd be doing a CT Scan sometime between 3 AM -8 AM. So, once we'd all seen him and made sure things were okay, so said good night to my parents, and got things ready for us to sleep here in one of the parent rooms they have. We were about to go settle in when the area where the rooms are was closed for cleaning! Ugh! Are you kidding me, lol. That was a little annoying, but we were able to get some other things done before heading to bed. We were in bed by 9:30 PM last night. We were totally exhausted!!

Sunday: November 15th

Dale and I woke up rested and able to take a shower, and feeling much better (although still tired since we were up for 36 hours). Jack is doing pretty well this morning. They tried to test and see how he'd do with our his ventilators (breathing tubes) but he was still have spurts of apnea so they aren't ready to take him off yet. He's still breathing a lot by himself though, so that's good. They'll try again this afternoon to see if he's doing any better. We aren't really worried though. He woke up pretty good from the anesthesia, so that isn't a problem at all. He was also able to get one of his IV's out, so his cute little hand is finally showing (both were stuck with various things yesterday). We'll keep everyone updated. Please keep little Jack in your prayers as he continues to recover from this ordeal! Thank you!

I'll be posting more photos probably this afternoon. I just have to find my camera again, lol.

Jack Dennison all hooked up to ventilators, IV, etc.

Jack again. He's sedated in these pictures from the MRI.

The room, and all the equipment that he's hooked up to.