It's Good to be Home...

Benjamin has been settling back into the home routine. He seems happy to be around his toys again. He's definitely been taking things a little slower than he did before the surgery. His legs are still trying to regain their strength, so he isn't racing around the house yet. He did manage to take a few cracks on his baseball tee. He didn't lose that skill at all. Wow, can he hit the ball!

During our final discussion with Dr. Cortez, he mentioned that he would like to repair Benjamin's urethra earlier than he was previously planning. Depending on the surgery schedule, he would like to do the urethral repair in the next few weeks. As Sean said when I told him this, that's not exactly the news we wanted to hear on the day we were leaving the hospital after 9 days there. Dr. Cortez is concerned that without the repair there may be increased potential for additional urinary tract infections. He also would like to take advantage of the catheter that is already in place for 6-8 weeks. Fortunately, this surgery would be much less extensive than the prior surgery. It would be 2-4 hours and would require 2-3 days in the hospital. He said it can be performed as outpatient surgery on many boys, but would require additional monitoring in Benjamin's case. We'll be going in for a post-op appointment next week. It sounds like it will be a pre-op appointment as well.

Tonight is Alex's long awaited science fair. He diligently (with much prodding from me) worked on his project over Christmas break and managed to complete most of it by the end of break. He had a hard time understanding why the project needed to be done during vacation when it wasn't due until January 22. I insisted that he had to get done since Benjamin was having surgery. Thank goodness he did since Benjamin was in the hospital for 9 days. Alex designed and built 2 bridges out of straws. Then he tested them to see which bridge would hold more weight. His suspension bridge held about 1 1/2 pounds and his truss bridge held almost 3 pounds. Here are a couple pictures of the process...