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.