Sunday 17 November 2013

Bye Bye Tube

My Pediatrician made an appointment for me to visit my tube insertion surgeon for my tube "removal" last Thursday. The McMaster clinic gave my mom a run down of the removal surgery procedure.
Apparently they do not put people under anymore to remove the tube. The high tech method is to cut the tube piece on the outside, and the inside piece just floats around in the tummy until it reaches the poop dispenser and visits the outside world! Mommy was concerned about this, so she mentioned that I was only 2.5 and small. They said it's okay that's what they do now. So with this information we headed down to our old McMaster stomping grounds to see my buddy Dr. Fitzgerald.

Upon arriving at the Child and Youth surgery clinic, Daddy opened the clinic door and I immediately knew I was in a place I did not want to be. I had to think of everything I could to get out of this! Mommy said we would only be here to see the Doctor and we would be done in only 5 minutes. I calmed down as mommy and daddy walked me to one of the clinic rooms where we were told that the doctor would be right with us.
As soon as we entered the room I tried to distract my mommy by asking to play Uno, if I got to play, nothing would happen to me! Mommy told me that we had to see the Doctor first, then we could play Uno. I was strangley okay with this.

Dr. Fitzgerald walked in and said "hmmm he's a little small for his age, do you mind if I try to just yank the tube out? That way he'll only feel a tugging for 5 seconds and then it will all be out?" Mommy and Daddy looked at eachother and said "Were were concerned as well that the inside piece may get stuck, so that's okay". I was introduced to Dr. Fizgerald as I was told to lay down on the bed. He seemed like a very nice man, plus he asked me what I had for Lunch... McDonalds chicken nugget and Fries!

I heard Mommy turn around and say "I can't watch", to which the doctor assistant asked Daddy "Are you okay to watch?" to which daddy immediately replied "Oh yes!".  With Daddy holding my hand we laid down and waited for the procedure to begin.  Dr. Fitzgerald held by tube up and snipped the end off with some scissors.  He then looked at me reassuringly and said "ok, this might hurt for just a second and it'll be over in a second."  He placed his hand gently on my tummy around my tube and took a firm grip of my tube and pulled.  Dr. Fitzgerald was right, it was over before I knew it.  After only a few seconds the end of the tube snapped off and it was over.  Dr. Fitzgerald wasn't surprised that the tube had broken as I was young and the skin in the area was still very tight.  The hole where the tube came out closed up immediately with no spills or splatters.

After I immediately started to whimper and called for my Mommy. Mommy came over and hugged me, then I was okay. Dr. Fitzgerald said that if he knew it was going to break he would have just cut it in the first place and that the inside tube piece was still inside so we had to look through my pooh diapers for the rogue piece.
Hmmm... we had no idea what that piece looks like and we feared that we would be scrounging around in poop for weeks! Dr. Fizgerald laughed and told his assistant to grab a new tube so we can see what we would be looking for, and assured us that we should see it in my poop by Monday. If not we could call him on Monday but even if the piece stayed in my tummy roaming around it would be okay there for a few months, as long as it didn't get stuck in my poop shute. (Well he didn't exactly use those words, but you get the idea!).

With that we left the Clinic. Mommy was right, we were in and out in 5 minutes! We stayed around for a bit in the waiting room though because they were playing a Chuggington episode on the TV. After the episode was finished we headed out to the car, where Mommy gave me a new toy car for being so brave "Francesco" from my favourite movie "Cars".

I am happy to report that I am totally tube free! I pooped out the inside piece Saturday Morning!





















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