Prayers, Please - Surgery Tomorrow

Caleb goes in for his new set of ear tubes and an adenoidectomy tomorrow morning. We are supposed to be at the outpatient surgery center at 7:30 and they expect to take him back at 8:00. The surgery should take anywhere from 15-30 minutes. We'll be there for a while afterwards so that they can make sure he comes out of the anesthesia okay and can eat/drink without getting sick. He can't have anything to eat after midnight tonight. Rudy has graciously offered to get up with him at 11:30 tonight to try to get him to drink some milk and eat a snack, then go back to bed. Poor little guy will be so confused. First, we've never woken him up in the middle of the night. Second, he ALWAYS has a cup of milk when he wakes up in the morning. This is without fail. The first thing he usually says when we get him up in the morning is, "I have milk, please?" Tomorrow, he has to not only go without his beloved milk, he can't have anything at all. For the first set of tubes (Feb '07), this was the worst part of all. He was so hungry when he came out of surgery that he practically inhaled his bottle. That made his ears pop, which hurt and made him cry like I've never seen before. It was heartbreaking.

I know this comes as no surprise to anyone. When I called the nurse this morning to get our arrival time, I had questions.

1. What's the recovery?
1 day for the tubes
4-5 days for the adenoidectomy
lots of pain relievers for the first couple of days and then fade those out
soft foods for 5-7 days
"take it easy" (no rough play, etc) for a week
no major travel for 2-3 weeks (Darn, there goes that tropical vacation we had planned)

2. When can he go back to school?
probably Monday, maybe Tuesday

I'm nervous about 2 things. First, my child is going under general anesthesia, which is always scary. He's two and they are going to put him to sleep. I know he will be anxious because we won't be with him and he'll be taken into a very strange place by people he doesn't know. Then they will start poking at him and he'll feel pretty helpless. I'll feel helpless because there's nothing I can do to help him. Second, the fear of the unknown is not my forte'. I want to know what to expect. There's no way to know in this situation. I just have to hope that Caleb will be a trooper and if he's not, I have to be patient until it passes.

I'll try to post something sometime tomorrow, but I don't make any promises. Hopefully, he'll sleep quite a bit to sleep off some of the painful time, but who knows!?! In the meantime, please say a little prayer for Caleb tomorrow morning and for his parents who are just hoping this will help.