He has to have surgery... what!

The major news of the past week was Ethan having surgery on Wednesday at Cook's Children's Hospital. Let me start with a little background information. Ever since Ethan was born we have always noticed that his right testicle was bigger than the left. Some times it would swell slightly but could be gone as fast as it came. We had ask the pediatrician a few times over the course of his short little life but she had never seemed concerned about it. She said it was possibly just fluid that was being absorbed back into the body and that was fine. I had even noticed that compared to other little boys around us his were much much larger than any of theirs. Since we had ask the doctor and nothing was wrong we just assumed our son was well endowed! Dallas was of course proud, ha! (He will kill me when he finds out I wrote that in here but I can't resist.)

Ethan has also had issues with his right leg and foot ever since he was big enough to sit in the high chair. Every once in a while he wouldn't put pressure on his right side when you put him down from the high chair. After a few moments he would regain composure and start standing and walking again. We had ask the pediatrician about this as well but since he would never do it at the office she said she couldn't really tell much. Since he only did it every once in a while we decided it must just be some sort of little cut on his foot or results of him stubbing his toe or something. He never cried when he did it nor did he ever do it except when getting out of the high chair. There was no physical evidence of injury on his body so we were all mystified.

When we went in for our 15 month check up his right testicle was swollen and she said she wanted it checked out by an Urologist. She referred us to Doctor Pinto in downtown Ft. Worth who was a Pediatric Urologist. It took us weeks to get in as you would expect with any specialist especially a pediatric specialist. Our appointment for consultation was on September 9th at 2 pm.

Originally I was going to have Dallas take him because he felt it was his responsibility to deal with the man problems but it was just easier for me to do it. I was highly impressed with the doctor upon leaving the office. We didn't have to wait that long and he seemed very knowledgeable of what he was doing. It didn't take him long to diagnose him and tell me that he was going to have to have surgery. He was diagnosed with a hydrocele with hernia in his right testicle. He was apparently born with an opening at the very top of were the testicle actually starts and if left untreated it can allow bowel in and cause a serious infection. He had an obstruction already through the opening and there was obvious pressure on him so surgery was a must. We scheduled the outpatient surgery for September 30th and he reassured me it was the second most common surgery for little boys right after circumstion.

I kind of put it out of my mind until I had to deal with it. It was necessary and there was nothing I could do about it so I decided to panic when it got closer... good plan, huh!