getting back on track

Lucy had a normal bedtime and she seems completely recovered. Next week she'll be back in preschool (unless there is some FLU scare or something). I think getting back to normal will be good for everyone. She seems so grown up now. I can't believe she'll be four FOUR soon.

Tonsil - dance

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I think

I think we might survive. Lucy had a much much better night last night. After struggling to fall asleep, she woke up only once at 11:30pm and then slept until 7:15. She woke up cranky but not crying. I hope that she doesn't take any more steps backwards. Her recovery was a bazillion times worse then I thought it was going to be.

Had to share a story (forgive me if I have already shared this):
A little conversation between Lucy and her auntie Jen:

Lucy: (eyeing the fireplace suspiciously) "I am scared that Spiderman might come out of there"
Jen: Don't worry Spiderman won't come out of there
Lucy: (won't go near the area in front of the fireplace) "but I am scared"
Jen: "Spiderman won't come out of the fireplace, he's more of a window guy"
ME: "Jen!" (whispers) "her bed is next to a window"
Jen: "besides Spiderman lives far away in New York"

Saturday night

Friday night was another long night of waking every hour, crying, squirming, miserable. Seriously thank GOD I have internet on my phone as i was able to sit beside her bed, soothing her whilst focusing on things outside of my brain. Today was a little better. She only had one major "pain" episode which happened as she was waking up from a two hour nap. She cried for about 10 minutes and then seemed fine. It's hard to know how much pain vs how much emotional stuff and what's the real issue. Tonight I could tell she was playing me a little in the whole bedtime game. I decided to do something a little different. Not necessarily a punishment per say but really a more focus approach to a cure. If she cries out from a sore throat it's three shots of ice cold water. In the middle of the night I haven't been pushing liquids as much. Tonight as she was going to bed I told her "Lucy, I talked to the doctor and he reminded me that it's VERY important that you drink cold water when your throat hurts, it will help it heal faster so that you feel better. When you wake up crying that your throat hurts at night I will come in to hug and kiss you and help make you better but each time your throat wakes you up I will be giving you three cups (medicine) of very cold water. This will help you throat." After our kiss and hug she started whining about her throat (which was seemingly fine up until that point). I said "oh sweety, I am sorry it hurts, I'll be right back". I got some ice water and had her drink three medicine cups, at which point she said "it feels better momma, good night".

I really don't think she's been playing me at all over the last two nights. I do think that perhaps a little habit is forming and I do KNOW that her body needs to sleep better if it's to heal. Even if she does wake up every hour tonight the ice water will help her (even if she doesn't love it). We'll see.

I should be going to sleep but I do need a moment of down time. I hope to have some good news to post about Lucy's sleep tomorrow.

EDIT:
not 20 minutes after this post she woke up screaming. she's only half way through her 4 hour pain-med window. WTH? I don't think I'll be sticking to my ice-water rule or this could be a long traumitizing night.

Thanks Auntie Linda

for the new shirt ... it really perked me up this morning! I love you. I have been very concerned about Uncle Rabbit and his fear of the Trunchbull from Matilda, why is he so scared of bad guys????

Friday night

oops, Lucy spilled a bowl of flour on Zep.

I am trying so hard to remember that if this past week has been incredibly hard, frustrating and exhausting for me that it must be nothing but hell for Lucy. It's hard. She's an emotional wreck. Everything that was hard about her before is like tripled right now except her energy level. She seems to be converting her physical energy into emotional abuse. We are both pretty much lunatics right now. I just hope that she can sleep tonight. I hope she feels better and stays that way starting now. We had the worst night ever last night. I am unbelievably exhausted and stressed. Lucy has been spontaneously crying in pain and needing to rock. I feel like such a wimp when I think of all the families who have children suffering week after week from major illnesses, but I give ... I give. Lucy gives. I thought this week would be hard but I never thought it would be this hard.

sucks

we kinda want Lucy's tonsils back if that's ok. we miss them and the sanity that went along with them.

quick update

lucy had a rough morning yesterday but perked up throughout the day. i stopped giving her the codeine because she seemed depressed and catatonic. the regular tylenol actually seems to work just as well with pain control, maybe not lasting quite as long but enabling her to drink a little more. it's been a traumatic week for both of us. lucy cried and cried trying to go potty yesterday, her eyes bugged out, i felt so bad there was NOTHING I could do (besides keeping her off the narcotics) to help her. for about a half hour before her tylenol and a half hour after she's super cuddly. last night before bed she asked for cheese and pepperoni to eat. i let her eat some bread and she ate 1/2 slice before i realized how hard it was, so of course i was worried about her bleeding most of the night.

Turning Whine to Wine

look at her eyes, you can really see the pain. Breaks my heart. The kitty even sensed something was wrong and has spent a lot of today in Lucy's lap.
Poor baby.

relief in sleep

I hope to have a wine delivery soon. It's only fair, Lucy gets codeine. Actually Lucy has been a very good girl. She's hurting badly. She's been pretty good about taking her medicine and I can push her quite far when it comes to drinking liquids. She hasn't really had food yet but I figure there's always tomorrow. I just hope that we have a better night and a better day tomorrow that the pain starts decreasing a little for her.

Long day ...

waiting to check in

all revved to go pre-op

recovering

in mamma's arms, post morphine

resting in bed with bunny-bear

Well as expected. The day went from being about me (anxiety, worry) to being about Lucy (pain, fear, anger) real quick. She held her own mask as she went under, once again I had a mini-breakdown leaving her asleep in the room. Thankfully she had used all her charm on the anesthesiologist right before she went out and he swore he'd take real good care of her. The surgeon came in about 40 minutes or so after she went under, he thought the surgery went well. Ten minutes later I could hear her in the recovery room SCREAMING, and yelling MOMMA. I paced, I fretted, I went to the hall ... I flagged down a nurse and said "that's my daughter, I want to be with her". She checked on Lucy and said "she's fine, that's just how they are when they start coming out". 20 more minutes passed, hearing her scream on and off I was about to flip out when the nurse came to bring me in to Lucy (the normally get them woke up and bring them to recover in the other room). I sat in there with her for a long while, rocking her as they gave her oxygen to perk her up. She calmed down with a little BonJovi "Living on a Prayer" I believe it might be a rare post-op lullaby that I subjected the surgeons and nurses to. Finally they came and said that she would possibly be spending the night at the hospital and they wheeled both of us to the short-stay unit. Lucy perked up fairly quickly down there. A couple movies, a couple hits of codeine, several ounces of chocolate milk and they let us go (we're only 10 blocks from Children's Hospital (where the procedure was done) should we need to go back. A couple hours after getting home I wake her to give her her pain meds (per instructions) and she flipped out. She started talking funny, drooling and was in obvious pain. I wanted to go back. I made her drink a couple ounces of water and Jen and the dog entertained her and now she's sleeping again. We'll do it again at 11pm with the meds and the liquids and then I will fall asleep with her. It's been a long day. I forgot to take ibuprofen with me to the hospital so my head was about to explode by the time we got home. It's better now. I just hope that we can manage Lucy's pain during the night and the next several days.

Monday at 8:00 a.m.

Here is Lucy 2 years ago adenoid surgery.

Lucy will be having surgery. If you want updates during the day I'll try to post them on Twitter. My Twitter ID is: somadabout

I am nervous and anxious. I know she is too. Today she said "mom look, my tonsils are already gone." Poor baby.

Cuitie Pie

we need good vibes

Lucy is sick again. We went to the pre-op physical and she had a fever. Her ped. put her on antibiotics but if her fever is not down by tomorrow night we have to cancel. As you can imagine trying to get this sorted out when you work full time and are single is a little like putting jello in a sock. My mom has been here all week taking care of Lucy to keep her out of daycare and away from germs. I've covered all my necessary duties at work next week. Lucy went on the hospital tour and she's prepared but I wouldn't want this on her (or my) mind too much longer. PLUS, the whole reason she is sick is because of these malfunctioning tonsils and adenoids so lets get the suckers out already. SOOOO please send your thoughts/prayers our way that Lucy wakes up healthy tomorrow and is good and healed before her operation on Monday morning.

Tired

Whew the past few days have sure been tiring. We are all out of sync with our routines and schedules. My mom has basically moved in here this week as I needed her on Monday night (to watch the kids I babysit), Tuesday night (I worked late), and then wanted Lucy out of preschool by Wednesday to minimize the chances of her catching a big bug before her surgery on Monday the 20th.

Lucy and I went on a tour of the hospital Monday night. She was the only kid on the tour and absolutely thrived under so much adult attention. It was a good tour and Lucy got to see the room where she'll be put under anesthesia, where she'll wake up and where she'll recover. She didn't have many questions but she paid pretty close attention.

I overheard her telling the child-life specialist that she went swimming with dolphins once. The child-life specialist was very impressed. I have NO idea why she said that, and I guess it would be considered a lie and maybe I should have called her out on it but I was more amused then anything.

So we are slowly preparing for Monday. Lucy is actually sick now (big surprise), and we'll see what her pediatrician says tomorrow at her pre-op physical.

Happy Easter

ohhh Saturday

today was such a beautiful day. We were outside from 9:30 am until 7:00 pm with breaks for lunch and dinner. Zep enjoyed laying in the warm sunshine with his girl Lucy.

Give Lucy some dirt and water and the girl will be amused for hours. She loves mixing and creating. She loves being outside.

Morgan and Mel came over to play. We ended the evening with a walk to the park. The kids played pretty nicely but by the end we were all tired. Lucy had such a long day outside she fell asleep in mere minutes.

A week from Monday is Lucy's tonsil and adenoidectomy. Arrrggh I am so scared. I don't know how people who's children actually require major surgery handle the stress and anxiety. You know? I always have this irrational fear that Lucy will be one of the bizaar cases where a routine procedure goes horribly wrong. It's just how I feel. I can't wait for her to be done and recovered. I really feel she needs this surgery. We waited over a year and nothing seems to be getting better, so I make this decision for her and hope it's the right decision. OH and I go back to work in two days after a blissful week off. I want a benefactor so I can stay home with her.

visiting friends in Bemidji

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Lucy

OK I am taking a chance here because I know in my heart that the "blog effect" will come and crap on my praise parade but here goes:

I believe Lucy is moving out of the "nearly diagnosable" stage of horridness and into somewhat of a enjoyable balanced shall I say nice and fun child.

For over a week (or two) now we've had our moments of pure evil but but they've been on the outter edge of normal human behaviors. Today I saw that side of her that I hope and pray will someday be her dominant personality. Lucy was kind and careful with Jacob (who we babysat all day and part of the night). She stayed within yelling distance at the zoo and was a real trooper about walking. Lucy ate her lunch good and didn't freak out on Amelia when she (Amelia) wanted her toys back (I was nervous that Lucy was going to throw one down, but she just moved on). After a car-ride nap Lucy and I snuggled a little (yeah) and then played outside as long as we could. The boys came over and Lucy was kind and accomodating to them as well.

I really loved to see her interact with our older neighbor kids (9 and 11 yrs). Lucy was really mature in how she played with them and asked questions and tried to engage them. Watching her was very very enjoyable today.

Spring break is the greatest. Tomorrow we head to Bemidji to hang with one of our favorite families.

today at the zoo

Lucy helps Jacob wash his hands, sweet!

Looking at the fish

Bennett and Amelia joined us.

They are just so old now.

Sunday

We started out the morning with a snowy trip to the zoo to see the baby farm animals.

There were several melt-downs. I started to feel better after a bag of doritos but still we were cold and wet and cold and wet and for some reason not understood by a single soul, Morgan decided to cry a lot. I really don't remember seeing many animals which seems to be a pattern on our trips to the zoo.
Well I guess we saw this awesome wolf, staring at us through the window.

The snow was beautiful, thankfully because it was not at all welcome or appreciated.

Later in the afternoon we drove down to Northfield with Karen and Peter to meet up with Matthew and Elizabeth. See the big kids on the right? I was their nanny from the time they were 6 weeks and 20 months old! I can't believe they are in college. It was fun but honestly a little depressing. I don't think I'll ever be ready to just drive away from Lucy leaving her miles away and not knowing every little thing about what she's doing. Lucy on the other hand IS TOTALLY ready for college life. She saw Matthew (photo above) and about 5 minutes later declared him to be her "best friend".
Do you see that I am standing on a box? Do you notice how everyone not on the box (except Lucy) is still a head or two taller then me???

Saving Jacob

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