{Karlton Bontrager}

In his talk the day before, the ENT specialist had indicated that Karlton might come out of the anesthesia quite quickly, perhaps within minutes. But it was not that way at all. At noon we got word that he is in the Recovery Room, and he didn’t come back to the ward for another hour. Then he slept most of the afternoon and evening. Occasionally his left eye would open and seem to focus, but then it would roll back into his head and he would continue sleeping.

Karlton looked like quite a sight when he came back from surgery. His face had a yellowish tint where it had been washed in iodine. He had a single suture on his lower right cheek where the maxilo-facial people had gone in under the bone to lift it up. Just under the right eye was what looked like a line of suture thread. It held together the top of the cheek where the surgeons had inserted a titanium plate to support the cheek bones. The thread was anchored to his forehead at the top of his nose and to the right side of his face. It was held taut in that position by the anchoring tapes. More suture thread came from his right nostril and was taped to the lower side of his cheek next to his mouth. That, we were told, was to pull the packing out of his nostril when it is ready to come out.

We had three scares afterwards, when things didn’t go as expected. Adding to our fears, was the ignorance of the nursing staff about what was going on. A few worried telephone calls to the House Surgeon (resident) and the ENT specialist came back with the response that those reactions were to be expected. But then why didn’t the surgeons communicate that to the nursing staff???!!!

The most concerning incident was the blood that oozed from the line of suture tread under the right eye. As Karlton’s face became swollen (luckily, we were told to expect that), the string pulled taut appeared to cut into his skin. Dark, thick blood oozed from that site. The House Surgeon assured us that it was better for the blood to exit the skin than to be trapped under it. But it did look nasty.

So it was quite a day for us all. We, his parents, and the nursing staff had several scares. But Karlton on his painkillers slept through most of it. We are very pleased on the whole with his care and with the responses of the medical staff when things don’t go as expected. We did feel a bit angry about the poor communication about developments after the surgery. We’ll have to address them as we have opportunity.