Surgery, Sufferings and Recovering

Corban is resting well now. But it was a long day.

Surgery started yesterday at 12:30pm and didn’t end until close to 10 o’clock last night. The surgery was originally scheduled for 7 hours, but ended up taking about 9, as Corban’s hips and legs proved to be a real challenge for the surgeon. Though he’s done many surgeries similar to this one, Corban’s was, in his words, “the most difficult case.”

There were many reasons why it was so challenging, but probably the biggest one was that Corban’s hip sockets were deformed from having the ball joints resting behind them for so long. The ball joints made little indentations in the sockets, so they were not as rounded as they needed to be. This made it extremely difficult for the surgeon to fit the ball joints in socket. He told us after the surgery was over, that at one point he really thought about coming to tell us he just couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t get them to fit! But praise God, he didn’t give up. He kept trying and with much patience and much maneuvering, somehow he managed to get them in. I know this was the Lord’s mercy and the result of many prayers! So, thank you all for praying.

Thank you for praying for us last week as well! It was such a crazy week. But the break in Corban’s femur ended up not being an issue for surgery this week, as the femur would have needed to be cut anyway. The surgeon just cut the bone where it was already broken. Then he took ¾ of an inch out of each leg, rotated the bones, screws in the plates, lined up the ball joints, placed them in socket, stitched him back up and put him in a Spica cast (which he’ll be in for the next 6-12 weeks). Sounds easy, right?

No, not easy.

Corban did end up losing a lot of blood during surgery, as it was such a long procedure. So he had to have a “large” blood transfusion to compensate for the loss. But he recovered well and by the time we saw him last night, he looked nice and pink.

The anesthesiologist ended up sticking around until Corban’s surgery was completely over (I think she fell in love with him and didn’t want to leave), then set him up in the PICU with an epidural and a constant drip of heavy pain medications. Despite the heavy pain meds, he cried most of the night and thrashed his head from side to side. It took all night and half way into today before he really started resting and sleeping peacefully.  He was also pretty miserable half of the day with a fever of 103, but he’s doing much better now as the fever has since come down.

Sigh.

It really does stink, you know? The pain. It stinks. I really hate standing there watching him suffer and not be able to take it from him. It hurts a mommy’s heart! But, I think of how God must have felt to see his Son struggling so (on the cross), and know he couldn't take it from him either. To accomplish salvation, Christ had to suffer. To do great things, he first had to die.

So, as I sit and watch Corban tonight, I am hopeful for his future—knowing that this suffering will bring about great things. His suffering will accomplish something, just as Christ’s sufferings accomplished something. It is not pointless. It is not in vain. And our sufferings in this life are not vain either. With that, I am comforted.