Going Under the Knife

Our moment of excitement this past week was Elisabeth - who I will now refer to as Eli from here on out...mostly do to sheer laziness in not wanting to type her full name - and her surgery. She was born with an umbilical hernia which normally goes away as a child grows, only hers must have been fairly substantial at birth because at age 7, she still had a bulge around her belly button. We visited with her peds surgeon a couple of months back and she recommended we go ahead and have the surgery done.

So off we went to sign in for surgery. Eli was quite delighted to find out she would have an "innie" after she was done - she turned to me and said, "Just like you, Mom!". Yes, well, praise God for the little things, I guess. She was very intrigued about how she was going to be "put to sleep" and I explained to her it wasn't like animals being put to sleep (I'm sure the State would have something to say about that!) but rather, she would breath into a little mask and next thing she knew, she would be waking up and it would be over.

Eli was given a pair of little blue scrub shorts and top and some yellow slipper socks with VERY grippy bottoms. She was allowed to bring a blanket and stuffed animal and luckily I packed her Leapster because her surgery was delayed three hours.

Finally, the surgical nurse came to wheel Eli back...she looked rather forlornly at me as she went around the corner, out of sight. The surgery unit has a pager system now and you are assigned a code so you can tell what stage your child's surgery is in. 45 minutes later, I was called into the recovery room where a very groggy and weepy Eli was just coming to. She winced and told me, "Mom, I didn't know it was going to hurt THIS bad!".

For the next 90 minutes, she fought to wake up and the nurses worked on managing her pain. She was able to transfer to a second stage recovery and lay against me as we rocked and I sang songs from past Andy Griffith shows (I know...I am so deeply spiritual). I must admit...her sitting still long enough for me to rock her has well, never happened. I rather liked the post-anesthesia Eli...but the nurses denied my request to leave the IV in and send me home with some extra IV drips of sedatives. Spoil sports!

So Eli took a couple days to be able to stand upright and still needs help dressing and sitting up. She is back at school today but is unable to participate in any physical activity. She also walks hunched over like a little old lady. Someday, though, when she wants to sport a 2-piece swimming suit or even become pregnant, she'll be glad she went through all the pain now.