Today Skylar got her tonsils and adenoids removed. I've never had one of my children have surgery. Man that was quite a different experience than I expected...well some of it. Here she is getting ready to leave to go to the hospital at 6:30 am. She has no idea what is about to happen (she's only 2), she's just been wondering why mom got her up so early to give her a bath and do her hair while everyone else is still sleeping.
Oh, we can't leave without her favorite blankie. Cute huh? Her Grammy Nancy made it for her and she wants to take it everywhere with her.
Arrived at the hospital at 6:50. Here we are, already done with registration. Now she's getting a quick checkup by the nurse.
Ooh, now this is getting fun! The cute hospital nightgown and red socks. She is really excited about the red socks, most of the day she was pulling them back onto her feet because they're a little too big but she loved them!
Just playing around, still with no idea what's about to happen.
Still playing around, the nurse came and opened up the curtains and she did not want that! They had to be closed so she kept closing them.
Here's where things start to get "weird" for her. Right now she's watching another patient get wheeled away on a gurney. She is pretty concerned and just starting to wondering "what am I doing here?"
I think she's feeling a little uncomfortable now and unsure of what's happening.
Now she's begging me for gum but can't eat or drink anything till after. Good thing it's so early.
Trying to search my pockets for gum.
Yay! I thought! A little red wagon instead of a gurney. How fun, she'll like that.
Nope, I'm carrying Skylar while she pulls all our things in the wagon.
After sitting for a while she decided to get in the wagon if I'd pull her in it. So I did that for a few minutes while we waited for the Anesthesiologist and Dr. Ense.
One of the nurses who said she'd be with her for the whole surgery. I think her name is Jenny.
Skylar's really excited to be talking to her. ;)
Here's Dr. Ense, after talking more to him this morning I'm liking him much more and I felt comfortable that he was performing the surgery. Skylar however looks like she's thinking "just get away from me, you're not doing anything to me."
Nurses Kyle and (maybe this is Jenny) I can't remember... getting ready to take her back.
At 7:45 she's headed back, I'm actually surprised she even let him take her instead of her.
What they do is put a mask on her for the anesthetics right when they get her back there. It takes about 10 seconds for them to go to sleep.
Good luck Skylar. I love you!
Dr. Ense came out and talked to me at 8:25 and said everything went really well and that she did really good. He said I could go back to see her after she woke up and was a little active.
At 8:50 I got to go and see her, they were taking her up to her recovery room. The next hour is completely heart breaking for me.
Here she is, hysterical with anger and confusion, who knows what other emotions; she even seems delusional at times. Right now she's trying...again to take out her I.V.
Just crying, screaming, hitting (which isn't normal for her). This is so sad, I'm sure she's so confused with what just happened and why she's suddenly in pain. Which brings me to this; the HUGE disappointment of the whole process. So she was done at 8:20, woke up some time between then and 8:50. When she started crying I asked if she'd had pain medicine yet, they said no. Then the nurse said she'd work on that.
Well, she didn't end up getting pain meds until 9:25, she gave her Tylenol w/ codeine. Then continued to cry and scream which doesn't help the pain. The nurse Annalee was very nice by the way, I really liked her. It wasn't her fault she hadn't had meds yet. All the pain med machines were on lock down so she couldn't get to them, the pharmacist had come up and tried to fix it, finally they brought some down from the pharmacy. I don't understand why they didn't give her pain meds before she woke up, or at least right after. She waited over an hour.
Dad and Fisher got here so he's now trying to comfort her. She's ripped her gown off in her pain and anger.
She's like this (most the time worse) for the first 50 min. Her throat sounds so sore. I could not get her to stop screaming and crying. She kept screaming, it hurts, it hurts and no and stop it.
Here she's starting to settle down a little after crying and screaming for 50 minutes strait!
At 8:50 the nurse adds morphine to her I.V. which sparks some interest from Skylar and calms her down the rest of the way. Maybe the morphine works that fast too....don't know.
Now she finally wants her popsicle we've been trying to offer her for the past 50 min.
She's just slurping it down now. She just told the nurse that Fisher needs a popsicle too, of course Fisher didn't object. Oh by the way, for her diet the next 2 weeks she can't eat anything with red food coloring in it, they don't want it to be confused with blood. Also soft foods of course and lots of liquids.
Having some jello.
Now she wants to hold the teddy bear they gave her, she's trying to sleep on and off but just can't fall completely asleep.
Now she wants to check out her I.V. and decides it's not so bad after all. She says "is it stuck mommy, is it stuck and I can't take it off?"
She wants to take a look at this blood pressure cuff that was driving her nuts the first hour. She kept saying it hurt, but that was while she was screaming about everything. I finally convinced her it was hugging her leg. Annalee checked her vitals every 15 min. for the first 1 1/2 hrs, then every 1/2 hr for an hour, then ever hour after that.
Another popsicle
The mask scratched up her nose a little bit. Her face looks a little swollen to me. They said it could be a mild reaction to the anesthetics but her breathing was always fine so they weren't concerned. I guess it could be from all the crying too though.
Time to wash her face. :)
The cute teddy bear and fleece blanket they gave her.
I just realized they must have tried to give her an I.V. in her other arm and didn't get it, unless they drew her blood or something.
"Time to do mom's hair" she told the nurse.
At 11:50 she starts to become much more active.
It's 12:00 and lunch time, she ate a little bit of jello and drank some apple juice. She didn't want anything to do with the beef broth. She wanted the lunch they brought for me, so I had to keep covering it up and eating a little at a time. They just wanted her on liquids basically until we left the hospital.
Vitals check agian.
Removing the I.V. because she's drinking so well. She's not happy about it till after when she realizes it's gone.
Mmm having some strawberry ice cream, she ate about half of that.
Ok it's soooooo time to go home. 1:00 and she wants to run all over the place. Annalee just removed her heart monitor from her foot (because Skylar ripped the tape for the third time).
Playing on the other bed.
She wouldn't stop crying for some of my food again so I gave her a tiny piece of watermelon, then she wanted more. I asked the nurse and she called the doctor and he said it would be ok if she had soft foods now. So she ate the rest of my watermelon and canteloup.
Playing around.
I decided I might as well put her pajamas back on since she had no more gadgets attacked.
She wants to go out in the hall.
Having some vanilla ice cream now, she ate all of it.
Finally at 3:20 she falls to sleep. Of course then I wasn't able to for some reason.
Yay! Time to go home at 4:30. Thank goodness we didn't have to spend the night like Dr. Ense planned.
Liking the wheelchair ride a little bit.
Tonight she's doing really good. We got her prescriptions filled and are keeping the pain from coming back at all by giving her the pain medicine right when it's due. She's gone from running all over the house with the boys to just lying around. Overall it wasn't too bad, the worst part of the day was when they took forever to give her the pain meds. That was so hard to watch and try comforting her without it seeming to help. Also seeing her act so different than normal and seeming so confused and delusional was hard. I'll do some updates as she's healing.
Oh I forgot to mention, Kerby said if they offer me her tonsils and adenoids to accept them and he'd use them as bait to catch some nice big cat fish. I'm glad they didn't offer them!
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