our 1st surgery experience.

this nurse really set the stage for an extremely positive surgery experience for all of us. she was so upbeat and very well versed in dealing with youngsters. she always talked directly to emma keeping her attention and good eye contact the entire time. explaining every single detail along the way, while interjecting child play games/songs in the process. and then she was smitten when she was handed this adorable little bear to hold tight. something about that nurse just made the whole experience beautiful and not scary or anxiety ridden. it really made my heart smile considering what it took to get to this point.

what you didn't know prior to surgery was that on Friday we got a call from our pediatrician telling us to cancel the surgeries at the outpatient surgery center and call the Ear, Nose, Throat doctor to reschedule them at Children's Hospital. after finding out that 60% of the patients are pediatrics, emma's pediatrician was concerned about anesthesia at the outpatient center with her age and medical history of asthma and antiobiotic allergies. anywho. when i called the surgeon, I got the run around saying that the doctor didn't do surgery at Children's (even though he has priviledges there), and that i'd need to schedule her with another doctor in the practice to be evaluated all over again and then have a deciding factor on if the same surgery would be needed and then schedule at Children's.

i said, no thank you. we've been through enough drama lately. i didn't more.

so we kept things the same and i'm SOOOOO glad we did. after having been through the experience, i can almost say for certain that i don't think the level of care would have even been close to the same level at Children's Hospital. we've been there a lot. i haven't been real impressed.

we covered our bases during phone calls prior to surgery, asking all the important questi0ns concerning her care and their checks and balances. what's done in an emergency. oh, and ensured that she'd have a pediatric anestheseologist assigned to her. and he was perfect. he answered all of our questions without hesitation and listened to our concerns and never once acted annoyed. she felt at ease when he visited her before surgery.

then. then, it was time for the good stuff. she got a dose of liquid versed (think valium) to relax her and some nausea medication. again, the nurse listened well, when we had problems getting her to take a chewable, which she never does, she gave her two times to try to take it, then just went and got the liquid version. so much less stressful when they can adjust with your child.

anywho. she was cracking us up once that versed kicked in. at first, it was a little disturbing to see my baby go from being entirely coherent, to all of the sudden falling all over herself and not able to hold herself sitting upright. it was like she was intoxicated. we thought that it might be a good idea to put the other bedrail up to keep her from falling out. her little body was like wobbly jello. i couldn't help but laugh at all the silly stuff she was doing. after a bit i could tell that she knew something wasn't right about her own behavior and she muttered the words......"i want ashwee." this is the only little bit of being scared that we saw from her.


so up in the bed ashlyn climbed and together they snuggled until it was time for surgery. it was sweet.

then, hugs & kisses and off she went while we headed to the waiting room. no sooner than we got settled in the waiting room and they were out to tell us she was done and the doctor would meet with us for a chat. 20 minutes to do both surgeries! isn't that amazing!?

so the doctor told us that she had pus and cloudy fluid in both ears which was cleaned out and antibiotic drops added. then he put tubes in and moved on to remove her adenoid tissue. both surgeries were performed without incident.

30 minutes later she was out of stage 1 recovery and into stage 2 where we were escorted back to be with her. as we got back there, she was crying and disoriented. they were trying to get her to take a slushie through a syringe. ha. i think that would make me cry too. all it took to calm her down was me climbing into bed with her to rock her and snuggle and she was back asleep for another 45 minutes. during that time we tried many times to get her to wake and take fluids. mommy to the rescue when the Spiderman sippy cup was filled with apple juice and the blue rasberry slushie was dumped. ha. everything is better with a Spiderman sippy.