On July 19th Jackson had his CI surgery at UZA. His first implant was placed on the right side of his head. The left side will follow 6 months after. The procedure took about 2,5 hours. We were allowed to see him in the recovery room around 12:30 pm, he was still very much asleep. He woke up a little later, a bit groggy, sore throat, but we had to wait a little while to give him anything to drink. Luckily his little cuddle sheep was with him, who also seemed to have had surgery…
Later that afternoon, after drinking and eating Jackson was back to his usual self, playing and laughing. Still tired from the heavy anesthesia but he did not seem to be in pain. My husband stayed with him that night in the hospital, I went home in the evening, went for a run and got to bed.
The next day Jackson was released from the hospital at noon and we were happy to get back home. To say the following days were easy is an understatement. A heat wave hit Belgium that week, and while I normally welcome a little sun and heat, this was just pure horror. While our son was recovering from surgery, with a bandage around his head, temperatures were above 30 degrees Celsius. We couldn’t keep his room cool, he couldn’t sleep. He sweated so much the bandages were soaked, we had to replace them constantly, it made him crazy, he just wanted them off. And he did take them off every chance he had. Very frustrating for him and us, we felt so bad putting the bandages back on every time. But we had to for at least 4 days, to prevent possible swelling. We played every trick in the book, took Jackson driving in the car so he would just fall asleep. I strolled around in the middle of the night just to cool him off. It must have been a sight. Me in my pajamas, Dexter all excited about the unexpected walk at this indecent hour. It was a couple of rough nights and days for all of us.
On July 25th we had a check up at UZA and thank god we could take the bandages off! The wound was healing nicely. Temperatures were back to normal for a Belgian summer and Jackson slept like a baby again.
Now it was looking forward to activating his CI!
Curious to see how a Cochlear Implant works:
