she's baaaaaack...

she's back to her normal bouncing-off-the-walls-super-big-smiling self already!  everything yesterday went exactly as planned.

we had to wake up at 4:30am to get all of spidergirl's medicine in her before the 5am cut-off time of nothing else by mouth. of course, if you've been reading for a while you'll remember that spidergirl wakes up at the butt-crack of dawn quite frequently, so she was ready to roll.

her and i made it to the hospital for check-in and pre-op at 6am and were quickly registered and ushered to a pre-op room right next door to the ocean room.  she's been here many times before, and there were only two things she was really looking forward to. one of them was the ocean room.

we got ourselves cozy with a blanket, some puppets and a book to read until the party really got started.

 

it wasn't long before she was told she could go pick out a toy from the ocean room. since it was right next door she didn't have to follow the path of fish posted on the walls down the hallways that lead the kiddos to the room bursting full of surprises. but she didn't mind at all.  she spent several minutes agonizing over what to get because in all honesty, she wanted one of everything! she decided she would come back later when daddy and ashlyn arrived so they could help her narrow it down.

it turns out they weren't very convincing in getting her to pick something different either. it shouldn't be any surprise that out of all the super cool never-before-seen toys that they had to offer she walked away with a tiny (smaller than a beanie baby) kitty that meows when you press it's tummy. if you've been reading a while you'll remember she's severely allergic to animals, but has the biggest love affair with them you've ever seen.

she was talking a mile a minute once daddy arrived with ashlyn.  he had to go into work to get things moving at 5:30am--ashlyn went with him--and they met up with us at the hospital.

it also wasn't a surprise that she picked 'cherry' as her scent she wanted to smell through her mask.  this kid--so predictable. i LOVE that about her.

she was given the choice by the anesthesiologist on whether or not she wanted some loopy juice to calm her down before surgery.  she first said "nah" a little unsure of her choice, but then changed her mind and said "well, um, yeah" with a bit more confidence.

i've said it before, and i'll say it again.......watching a child after taking loopy juice is the best entertainment ever. LOL. 

ashlyn thought it would be funny to have her say her ABCs, and oh my gosh........hysterical. she kept asking us why we had 4 eyes.  doug took a couple short videos of it, but they are on his phone and he's not here, otherwise i'd entertain you for a few minutes.

shortly after we talked to the doctor about the procedure she was having which is called: esophagogastroduodenoscopy with biopsies under general anesthesia. which broken down in a more understandable terminology is a scope of her esophagus, stomach and small intestine where they take tissue samples while she is completely knocked out.

they were doing this test to confirm a suspected diagnosis of eosinophilic esophagitis which is an allergic inflammatory condition of the esophagus. which makes total sense considering her extreme allergies, only this is usually caused by food allergy and not so much environmental allergy from what i understand.

so we were ushered into the waiting room while she underwent the procedure which took about 40 minutes. after that time the doctor said everything went as planned and they ended up taking 11 biopsies; 4 in her esophagus, 3 in her stomach and 4 in her small intestine. thery will have results in 2-3 days and we will hear a confirmed diagnosis shortly after.

the doctor said she is concerned about the white spots at the end of her esophagus. they took a brush culture of these spots which can be indicitive of yeast &/or eosinophilic esophagitis, or something else altogether. we may be headed down a road of more and more food related allergy testing soon.

anywho. after another 45 minutes of waiting we finally met up with her again in post-op recovery, where she got to her second favorite part.....popcicle time!  ashlyn entertained/annoyed her with a puppet show.

 while daddy entertained her with the videos of her hopped up on loopy juice.  she wasn't amused.

a short while later she was begging for another popcicle and i headed back home with the girls and doug made his way back to work.