The Wells Family: A long few days

We had a few more complications over the weekend with Caelum this weekend. After Thursdays traumatic experience, Caelum was able to pee 3 times on Friday and his last time to go was around 5pm on Friday. We woke up Saturday and he still had not urinated at all. At about 1100, we headed to the ER. Caelum had to go but just would scream all morning. We went to one of the local hospitals as that is where we were told to go. After arriving, multiple attempts to pee, and lots of phone calls the ER doctor made, Caelum won a trip to Duke University in Durham via Ambulance. He was soooo excited to finally get to ride in an ambulance. The ER doctor was wonderful and just was not comfortable doing a blind poke into his bladder to get the urine out. After the 1.5 hour ambulance ride, we arrived at Duke for our direct admission to the Children's floor. We were greeted by a huge team of wonderful medical professionals. I probably had to tell his whole story at least 10 times, to all the different teams coming in that were going to be working with Caelum. The plan was to initially go in with a camera on a guide wire through his penis in which they can see what all is going on with his trauma and see how it was looking. Next they would insert a catheter if they were able to bypass the trauma area. If this was not successful they would then do an ultrasounded guided suprapubic catheter. All of the ORs were full, so we had to wait as they wanted to do this around 9 or 10pm. They were trying to wait a bit as he had ate 1/2 a cracker around 2pm and did not want to risk aspiration during the procedure. Then the otherside was they wanted to get him in quickly as his bladder was continuing to fill and needed to get the urine out.
So Caelum was very uncomfortable and in pain while waiting. We walked the halls, sat in the room, walked some more....he wanted you to hold him at all times and keep moving, not sure if the movement eased the pain or what? But we all have gained some big muscles over the last few days. After one long screaming fest he finally peed all over the floor. I had a slight hope that maybe this procedure/surgery who be cancelled. But unfortunately he still had quite a bit of urine left.
About 9 pm, they came and got us and took us down to preop. He rode in his bed as I followed along. He was so exhausted yet so awake as he was unsure of what all was going on. We get down to Pre-Op go over a few more things. The Anesthesia team came and gave him some Versed to try to help ease him up before they took him from me. Unfortunately it did not make him too drowsy as he was screaming and grabbing at me as they took him...that was hard. So they took him on and went out to the waiting room. I got to meet a wonderful lady who had been out there several hours waiting on her husband to come out of surgery...he had got a call the night before saying they had a kidney for him! Very exciting, yet scarier as he has had lots of kidney issues and there were a few complications at the beginning of his surgery. I was out there for about an hour before the doctor came out. Caelums team had all Adult Urologist on it as the Peds doctors were not on. But they were wonderful. The lead doctor, Dr. Robertson came out and sat and talked for a good 15 minutes with me. He was so calm and answered all the questions we had. He said they were able to go in with the camera and just see that only his urethra had sustained some swelling only. He bladder and tops of urethra looked great. He had some blood clots in his bladder and they cleaned those out. They then slipped the catheter over the guide wire into place and then removed the guide wire. He is to keep the catheter in for 3-5 days. And we are to followup with a Pediatric Urologist there at the Dukes Childrens Hospital. We have an appointment set for Wednesday and will hopefully get the catheter removed. We are just hoping a lot of potty retraining is not needed?!
It has been a long few days with lots of ups and downs....Bath time and bedtime are the worst with lots of screaming and pleading and bargaining from Caelum.
Jason and I are ever so thankful for all the prayers, as they have truly been felt. And a HUGE thanks to Teddy, Gramm's, Uncle Chris, Aunt Jen and Kerrick and Raelyn. They have come up and helped out with everything....cooking, going to appointments, losing lots of sleep, holding, rocking, keeping Kerrick, just being there, cutting grass and too much else!! Thank you guys!!
And a shout out to big dude Kerrick, he has been in the backseat lately but being a good big brother. Gramm's said he was offly clingy and really good on Saturday while all this was going on...he knew something was up. He has been really helpful since we got home in distracting Caelum and keeping him entertained. He has done a little bit of rocking with Caelum so we can get a few things done.
We will keep you posted...but keep praying as I think we will have several follow up appointments to stay on top of this to make sure it is healing correctly.