Lucas' Surgery - 6 Months Later

It's been over 6 months since Lucas' surgery, and I've been procrastinating writing anything about it. Let's just say it was a...life altering event. I never want to have another child have to go through that again. But since Lucas will never remember it, I guess it's more appropriate to say that Jake and I never want to go through that again.
It would take a long time to write about everything that happened, so I'll just keep it short. Lucas had his tonsils and adenoids taken out because of his sleep apnea. Surgery was a difficult decision, but his apnea was waking him up about 11 times an hour. After seeing the ear nose and throat specialist, we knew that it was the best thing for Lucas. The day of surgery came and we took Lucas to Primary Children's Medical Center for the surgery, the best place we could have gone. After surgery, the doctor talked to us and said that it went very well, that his tonsils were huge and deep, especially for a baby his age, 15 months. Only one parent was allowed to go back to recovery where the children wake up, so I went alone. This was the hardest part, seeing Lucas come out of surgery. They had told us the anesthesia makes kids really upset when they wake up, and they were right. Lucas had pulled out his own breathing tube and pulled all his clothes off. Three nurses were trying to calm him down, and he was screaming in a way I've never heard before, and never want to hear again. His lips and nose were bleeding and swollen, and he had blood on his face. I had just walked into every mothers nightmare. I took him from the nurse and after about 5 minutes got him calmed down and sleeping fitfully. They moved us to an observation room where we would be for the next 24 hours. Our job was to keep him comfortable and get him drinking as much as possible. He slept most of the time because of the medication, but we got him to drink the minimum amount before they would let us leave.
We decided to leave the next morning thinking that he would do better once we got home, but he didn't. The next morning, he threw up some blood and we needed to go back to the hospital. Once we were there, they found that his throat was bleeding, and needed to watch him to be sure that he didn't need to go into surgery again. When they remove tonsils, they basically solder the area to make a scab, and that's what keeps it from bleeding. If that scab comes off, the bleeding can become very serious, and they need to create another scab. Luckily, we had the best doctors looking after Lucas, and they didn't jump into surgery again. Instead, the bleeding stopped on it's own. Jake and I were pretty much a mess after we had to check Lucas into the hospital again. It's agonizing to stand there while doctors put IVs into your screaming baby, and it was terrible to have him so incoherent because of painkillers (morphine). But two very very long days later, we left the hospital.
After about three weeks Lucas was pretty much back to normal, and sleeping better. He has recovered completely, he doesn't have apnea and sleeps through the night. We can tell a huge difference in him. He's happier when he wakes up and is a lot less fussy. Jake and I are less fussy because we've finally been able to sleep! After everything that happened, we would still have chosen to have the surgery...we just would have like to have been more prepared for what was going to happen, or what could have happened.
I'm so lucky that my son is healthy and happy. That this was a "minor" surgery. That my baby isn't there having surgeries all the time because of a birth defect or disease. As much as I hate that we had to go through this, it's made me more aware of how blessed we are.
We didn't take many pictues. Not the kind of thing that you really want to remember, but we were also really distracted.

The day after surgery, a couple of hours before we went home the first time.

Trying to recover, day 2 in the hospital (the second time around).