Mom and Pop Operation

Last week, The Prince underwent a bilateral eardrum incision, a fancier way of saying he got tubes in his ears. In case you're unfamiliar, the surgeon makes a very fine cut in the eardrum and pops in a tiny tube to allow fluid that would normally build behind the membrane and become infected to drain out the ear canal. The Prince had the operation just in time, too, he was working on a good-sized headcold that would have guaranteed Ear Infections 8 and 9 and ten days of antibiotics.

My wife and I brought him in early in the morning for the first scheduled surgical slot, a real blessing from the hospital staff (due in no small part to a call from his neurologist a few floors up at my wife's behest) since he wasn't able to eat beforehand. We just scooped him out of bed and threw on his coat over his pajamas. No sooner had we made ourselves comfortable in the waiting room were we called into the recovery ward to get him ready, and thirty minutes later we were carrying him to the O.R.. My wife went in with him while they administered the general anesthetic and then was shown to the waiting room to join me. The procedure was quick, about twenty minutes and he was back in recovery, but that twenty minutes was torture in my head because I don't think a two year old boy and general anesthetic belong in the same room. We were in a great hospital, one dedicated to the care of children, so my fears were not based in any fact, just my own fermenting imagination. My wife, God love her, showed no such worry, even if she felt it, I had no clue. I hope I held up as well externally. In my mind's eye, I looked more like a scared little boy than The Prince did.

We met him in recovery, and he was yelling at everyone. Maybe he felt he'd been tricked into sleeping, or was looking for the balloons the nurse had said he'd be blowing up as a way to get him ready to don the oxygen mask. He didn't even want to watch The Wiggles, usually at least a minute's distraction. He would allow me to hold him, but refused to entertain the idea of a nap, refusing even a sip of juice even though he was cleared to eat and drink. He just wanted to yell.

Thinking back on it now, I wonder how I was in the hospital at his age. I had contracted a heavy-duty fever and was admitted and my parents were sent home, neither one allowed to remain as is the norm these days. All I can picture of that stay comes from an anecdote my mother is fond of telling about the Playtex plastic bottles that were new then. The nurses called her in to supply whatever bottles I drank from at home since I was hurling the hospital's regular glass bottles across the room. As my mother tells it, the nurses used a full box of the little insert baggies over the next 24 hours, unable to get past the novelty of the new-fangled bottle. When I came back to the hospital the next year when I somehow gave myself a hernia, she noted that the pediatric nurses were all using Playtex bottles.

There are seldom mentions of my father in these recounted stories, but I know he was there backing up my mother, supporting his children. My father was a great deal like me, neither of us would be accused of talking too much in new situations. We both lucked out and married women who ably carry the verbal burden in this arena. Where we differ is that while I can use his moments of strength as a model, my father was improvising, going on instinct. He didn't have the memory of a father's example in these situations because his father wasn't much of a presence in his childhood.

My son eventually succumbed with a sigh as I rubbed his back, reaching out to his mother for the juice she'd had ready for him. He settled into my arms and relaxed, only stirring when the blood-pressure cuff around his calf inflated every so often. Finally, the nurse told us his vitals were fine, he could go home. He refused to let us cut off the ID bracelet around his ankle, going for the juvenile house-arrest look. We practically ran to the car to get him home and all three of us fell asleep within an hour even though it was 10 am.