Chordee Surgery

Against my better judgement, we went through with it.

I regret it now.

I hope I'm wrong.

I left it mainly up to my husband since he's a man. Also it seemed that the older my little guy got, the more noticeable the curve got. That and the thought of my son having to go through penis surgery as a teenager led me to go ahead with it.

The pediatric urologist had told us that he had an incomplete foreskin and he would use that foreskin in the surgery to fix the chordee. I really didn't want this to happen, but all the doctors I talked to agreed. A couple of them said our son could have the foreskin repaired later on. I guess I'll leave that up to him if he wants to.

As far as I know, his penis was a normal looking penis. Now it's not. That's why I regret it. Maybe it still has some healing to do? Maybe it'll look better in another month or two? I hope so.

We arrived for his surgery at 6:31am - 1 minute late and they had already called my cell phone looking for us to check in. Surgery wasn't until 9am. Picky people! We waited and waited and waited some more. They called us in to talk about insurance and then we waited some more.

Finally we were called into triage. They checked his vitals - height, weight, temp, heart rate, etc. Then back to the waiting room. Very frustrating with a baby who is breastfed and can't eat!! Then the nurse called us back and went over his health history. We were then taken to a new waiting room where we met with the anesthesiologist and then the doctor. After signing the papers, we waited in this secondary waiting room some more. At least they had these bubble tubes that our son liked to watch.

And then it was time. Time to hand my baby over to strangers knowing there was always the possibility something would go wrong and I'd never see him again. Hold him again. I told myself over and over this was a simple procedure. It would be okay. But my heart still pounded when they took off with him.

Back to the first waiting room where the next 75 minutes crept by. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Until the doctor came. "Everything went fine," he told us and I could breathe again.

He said the tissue - not just the skin - was bent so they put some stitches in. He also said there was a hypospadias but it was so close to the regular hole, there was no reason to fix it. He said they'd come get us in a few minutes and to see him in a month. Thankfully we didn't have to go back 2 days later because the doctor didn't need to put in a catheter.

A few minutes later, a nurse came and got us. We followed her back to the recovery room. She stopped at one of those anti-bacterial hand pumps and we "washed" our hands. Seeing my little guy all hooked up to wires broke my heart. He was still sleeping and had a tube in his mouth. It wasn't hooked up to anything. It had been while he was in surgery, but now it was just keeping his mouth open, protecting his airway.

He was hooked up to other things...heart monitor, oximeter, blood pressure cuff. His little blue and white blanket from home covered his body. He looked so hurt, so sad, even when sleeping. Like something had been taken away from him.

While he was sleeping, we got to see his "boo-boo". It was sooo red and swollen. Not too much blood, just a little on his diaper. He had a clear bandage wrapped around his penis. It reminded me of plastic wrap. They said to take it off in 2 days and if we couldn't get it off to bring him in so they could take it off. They stressed that we could cut if off. Seeing how snug it fit on him, there would be NO way I would take scissors to it.

He slept for a while. The nurses finally tried waking him up and he screamed and screamed. This was one time I didn't mind. I wanted to hear him cry, to know that everything was okay, that he wasn't brain damaged.

He nursed for a little while, they gave him some pain meds, and then he threw up and fell back to sleep. We had to wait for him to wake up more and stop throwing up to leave. It took a while. My husband went to get us some lunch. The nurse insisted on me waking him up and I hated that. I know they had to make sure he was okay before sending him home, but I wished we could have just rested. Soon he was awake and screaming.

We checked his diaper area again. Still awful looking. I immediately thought it looked better beforehand. We went home. He seemed to be doing okay. Clingy, but not overly cranky. He even got down to play but when he tried to walk sideways along the coffee table, he screamed. I guess separating his legs like that hurt. He didn't want to try again for a while.

We gave him the pain meds round the clock for a few days. He was also on antibiotics. The clear bandage fell off the next day. There were still blood spots on the diaper, but never a lot of bleeding. His penis looked horrible though. It was very swollen and then black and blue, purple, eventually yellow. It took at least a week for the head of his penis to be less red.

But it doesn't look normal. It's been almost a month and underneath is "bumpy". I noticed after a week or so that he seemed to have a pimple looking thing underneath. Now there are a few. I'm guess it's just a bunching of the skin, but I don't know. It looks odd. This is why I regret it. He might not be curved down anymore, but it points to the side - is that normal? I don't know. And he has this bunching underneath. I don't think anyone would have made fun of him beforehand. He looked like an uncircumcised boy without a LONG foreskin. It was shorter and there's not specific length, so would anyone have really noticed? But now!!! Now it's just weird. His follow up appointment is next week and I hope they say this is normal and will go away in a couple of months. I pray they don't say he'll need cosmetic surgery to fix it. UGH!!!

He also doesn't like me to hold him on my hip. Ya know with one leg on each side. He clamps his legs closed and cries. I don't know if it still hurts him or he just remembers that it hurt him at some point.

I hope that I'll change my mind and say this was the right decision. I hope all heals well and he's never teased and it never gives him problems. It was such a hard decision and I can only pray in the long run it was the right one.

I'll keep y'all updated.

On another note, I just want to say that the hospital was great. Even though we waited in the waiting rooms for a long time, they were nice, child friendly waiting rooms. Toys, ride on cars and bikes, movies, books, computers, plugs for phones, etc. There was a separate waiting room for people to eat food - so they kids who weren't allowed to eat wouldn't have to watch other people eating and be jealous. The nurses were nice. They called afterwards to make sure he was doing okay. So that part was a good experience.