Surgery Day!!

Today we are having Yaya’s palate repaired! We are to arrive at Children’s Hospital downtown at 10:30 a.m. Yuck. Yaya is our one child who WON’T  miss a meal. This is our eater. She is not going to be pleased that she can’t eat this morning. And she wasn’t…

Here we are at home with our, “Why won’t you guys give me chocie milk or feed me look.”

Here we are walking into pre-op with Daddy. Wish this photo was little clearer. I have one on the first surgery of her near the big number 3. She walked in the pre-op admitting/waiting area and just started running cruising around. Very different from last September when she always wanted to walk holding someone’s finger. She also says, “HI!!”  to everyone that will make eye contact with her. One really sweet thing happened. One of our neighbors that we really don’t know that well at all is an interpreter here at Children’s. She remembered Yaya’s surgery date and came to wish us well! How kind is that?

The second picture is of us 30 minutes later in our triage room waiting to sign forms and meet a million people who will be taking care of her. We also tortured her by putting 3 bands around her left leg and then later after the Versaid we put on her little gown. But by then she was so loopy she didn’t care. In the above picture she is watching cartoons. Thank goodness we brought all our technology and can wireless so we can watch Netflix while we wait. It happened that our the child before Yaya had a complicated surgery and it pushed ours back by several hours. It wasn’t until 2:30 that they took her back for surgery.

Below are our silly girl photos taken after we gave her the versaid to take the edge off.  She is our happy lovie drunk girl. When it really gets in her system she wants to give out kisses and hugs to us and all her lovies. And even the baby chick sticker on the door. One of the sweet nurses brought back a beanie baby bear that was rainbow colored. It took Yaya about 5 minutes to warm up to the bear and then it was LOVE.

The pass off went horribly. They sent one person out to get her who was a little girl in my opinion. She was holding a 3 ring binder that was bigger than Yaya which was Yaya’s chart. She said she was gonna go get a gurney and I told her that Yaya is not gonna lie on a gurney and be rolled away. Yaya will fight. The woman said that she would just carry her then. I looked skeptical and told her that I would need to carry her chart that there was no way she could carry both. She didn’t believe me. I told her that Yaya would buck and arch. She didn’t believe me. So I handed Yaya over and true to my girl, she went berserk. So the woman handed her back to me and looked unbelievably shocked. She then used her walkie talkie thingy and called for back up. At the same time another much larger and older woman came out with a large rolling bed. The small nurse said that she had to call for help. The bigger nurse said, “You want me to get her for ya?” While the little nurse debated I just walked up to the bigger one and said, “Yes. Take her. But know that she is going to immediately arch and buck and thrash. And she is strong. But let’s do this quick so you can get her under.” I passed Yaya over to the more capable nurse and off she went screaming like a banshee down the hall. My comfort is that because of the versaid, Yaya won’t remember any of that.

Then Eric went to the car where I had packed us a lunch and tons of snacks and brought it back to the parents lounge so we could eat. Many parents looked in with envy because they didn’t think to bring food. Now we sit in the waiting area. The ENT finished with her ear tubes about 3:00 pm. He said her ears are clear now and that he had to put new tubes in as her old ones were totally blocked. We are gonna follow up with him about every 2 months to see if he can clean her ears a bit so they don’t block up badly. If he can maintain her ears then she won’t have to be put to sleep to have them really cleaned out.

New news!!! We just were paged about Yaya. A new ENT greeted me to let us know that now that Yaya’s palate is closed and in doing so her tonsils were revealed more and are apparently very large and they are touching. Soooooo…Dr. Grant said it would cause sleep apnea if we left them and he wants them removed. So they are now taking out her tonsils and perhaps her adenoids depending on if they are obstructing her airway. The good news is that I asked about them and her freakish gag reflex. He told me they were likely the culprits for that! So it may be that this is one of our answered prayers that help our sweet girl to eat solid foods! The tonsillectomy will cause additional post-op pain, but with her palate being repaired it is all a big mess anyway. Better to get it all done now! We are very excited about the possibilities! Keep praying!