Devin's Surgery

{These pictures were taken right before we left for church on Sunday 3-6-11. My mom gave this outfit to Devin for his first birthday and I just love it. And that mop of curly hair...oh he is delicious.}

I haven't journaled a lot about Devin in recent months and I feel horrible about that. Yes, we do still have a fourth child. And like any fourth child, he seems to get over shadowed by the comings and goings of his older siblings. But he is still here and we are quite smitten with him! Something big is coming up and I wanted to make note of it. And this is something that will likely embarrass him in the future when he reads about it.

Devin is having surgery next week.

At the beginning of February, I noticed that his right testicle looked bigger than the left one. I know that not all symertrical body parts are equal in size so I tried not to worry about it. Cody looked at it and told me to keep an eye on it. Then as the week prgressed, I noticed it got even bigger. On Friday, February 4th, Leighann and Skylar were visiting and I happened to mention it to them. I went to change his diaper and Leighann wanted to see it. When I opened his diaper it looked like a water balloon! I imeditaley thought it was a hernia, but from what I knew of hernias, they caused pain. And Devin didn't seem to be in any pain. Needless to say I called the doctor first thing on Monday morning.

I took him in that afternoon and I was right. The poor kid had an inguinal hernia on his right side and it was protuding into the scrotum. In an inguinal hernia, the intestine or the bladder protrudes through the abdominal wall or into the inguinal canal in the groin. About 80% of all hernias are inguinal, and most occur in boys and men because of a natural weakness in this area.

We got him into a pediatric surgeon (which happened to be on Valentine's Day and we joked that the female doctor was getting to second base with our boy on a romantic holiday). Dr. Meyers told us about the surgery that needed to be done to fix it and we are all set to have it done on March 17th. So two Saint holidays...hopefully those saints will be watching over him!

There is a high chance that the fascia is weakened on the left side as well, so during surgery they will go in look with a camera to see if it needs to be repaired. If so, they will do it right then. I am nervous about the surgery, but from all the reasearch I've done it's extremely safe and very "routine". And Devin has already undergone general anesthesia for his ear tubes when he was nine months old and he responded fine to it. Hopefully, all goes as smoothly this time as well! I feel bad for the guy because he will be pretty bruised and sore "down there" for a while. No guy wants to have his junk messed with like that. It will be difficult keeping this busy man down so that he can recover propperly!