More accurately, they removed the JP Drain this afternoon. It was a fairly agonizing process, especially considering that The Boy's skin had healed over the stitch a little bit. Once the doctor finally got a good grip on it, he then had to pull the thing out. It was about a foot of tubing that was still inside of his body that we didn't see, in addition to the thing with the bulb at the end that we did see. The tube then widened at the end and was about 1/2 inch long, coming out of the little tiny hole where the tube had been resting. We're glad that thing is out and I'm sure that The Boy is as well.
I'm also glad that he has become reacquainted with the art of thumb-sucking. Once he was done screaming his head off and trying to bite down on anything that he could just to take away the pain from the drain removal, he calmed down, took his thumb in his mouth, and went to sleep.
Our friend from the Chai Lifeline foundation brought The Boy some toys, and we were thrilled to see him focus on a shape-matching toy because he hadn't done much in the way of playing since before the surgery. Maybe a bit of cup-clicking in place, but that's about it. This toy is a soft box, about 9 inches length/width/height, with circular, square, and triangular cutouts for the hard and soft shapes that matched. He was remarkably good at matching the shapes to the holes!
But back on the drain issue...the pain team had said that the fewer tubes and devices that a person has, the fewer his pain management needs are. Many people stop asking for pain drugs once the stupid NG tube is out.
I didn't realize how huge the JP drain was--I would have been pretty ticked off if something like that were hanging around inside my guts.
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