Surgery Day

Well Nanna had her dental surgery today. We want to say thank you to all of you who added her to your prayers. Her doctor said that she did very well in surgery and they were able to get everything done that we had planned. We got there at 10am, checked in at registration, then waited to be taken to the OR. She was doing pretty good, but a little nervous. She loved playing with the magnetized sand table in the waiting room. Then the guy came to get us and she got to ride in a wheel chair, she thought that was pretty cool. They got us back to the OR prep area, put us in a closed room with a door instead of one of the curtained sections, weighed her, checked her heart and oxygen levels, and gave her some hospital jammies to put on. Again, she was still doing pretty good, but nervous. Then we just had to wait for the doctors to come in and talk to us. The hardest part of the day for her was the "sleepy juice" and the IV. She remembered what the sleepy juice tasted like from her sedation appt. in the dentist's office a few weeks ago and she wouldn't take it. We gave her the option of drinking it out of a cup or squirting it in her mouth but she wouldn't do either. Unfortunately, being at the hospital and being on a tight schedule, the nurses wouldn't wait for her to keep changing her mind so two of them held her while I tried to squirt it in her mouth. You all can probably guess how well that went.......it didn't. She spit most of it out. So they had to just give her the IV without any of the drugs to help her relax. That's when it got bad. Now don't get me wrong, the nurses were actually very nice and I think Nanna probably quite liked them, but when you have an incompliant patient and you still have to get your job done.... So they bring the IV stuff in and she starts freaking out. She gets that from me. One nurse has to hold her arm down at her elbow and her wrist and the other nurse stuck the thing in. She was thrashing about and screaming bloody murder at the top of her lungs. I got to sit there with her the whole time and I tried to sing I Am A Child of God to her to help her relax or focus on something else, but I don't think she could hear me even though I was right in her face. The worst part was when they actually poked her, she hit a note I've never heard her hit. I had to turn my head for a second at that point so she wouldn't see me cringe; I'd caught sight of a puddle of blood at her elbow. Finally they got her all wrapped up with the pink bandage and started the sleepy drugs in her IV. I don't think I'll ever forget that look in her eyes and on her face. Pure Fear! Then she kept asking, "why did you have to give me a shot?". Poor kid. Thank goodness we were in a closed room, but I'm sure everyone out side of the room was wondering what we were doing in there to the poor little girl. A nurse even came in and asked if we needed an extra set of hands, but we were almost done by then so we didn't. Once the drugs started kicking in she calmed way down and they took her off to the OR and Mom and I went to the surgical waiting room. (Jon had to work, so my mom went with us.) Her surgery started at 12 noon and went for 2 whole hours. They called us half way through for a progress report and said she was fine. Around 2 Dr. Young came in and told us that they were done and everything had gone great. He was able to get everything done that he needed to this time. He ended up doing 4 or 5 root canals, 5 crowns, 3 extractions with 2 space maintainers-one of the extractions was a wiggly bottom front that was ready to come out with a big girl tooth ready to come in-and multiple other fillings for cavities. He basically worked on every tooth but 3, I think. The kid was double whammied with the bad teeth genes. Sorry Baby! Everything went well though and they took her over to recovery in Same Day and that's where we got to get her back. We had to wait in recovery for 30 min. before we could leave, just to make sure everything was ok. She didn't like taking the IV out either because it kind of hurt too, but wasn't anything like putting it in. Finally it was time to go home. She was so excited because she got another wheel chair ride. She has been pretty good the rest of the day. She slept the whole way home from Twin and just sat around and watched movies the rest of the afternoon. Amazingly she hasn't complained too much about pain. She has only had one dose of motrin. The silver lining (heehee, no pun intended)is that she gets to have lots of Popsicles and ice cream. Now she has a whole set of super duper chompers as we like to call them. What a brave little girl she was today. I'm soo proud of her. I have to admit - for those that know me- that I did pretty darn good too. It was so hard to see her screaming but I had to just let her scream and let the nurses do their job. I only shed a couple a quick tears in the bathroom after they took her away; but other than that I did pretty dang good. Good job to the 2 brave girls that went to the hospital and thanks Mom for coming with me. It's always nice to have an extra set of ears when talking to doctors and such. We all grew a little bit today. Wow, what a day, now I'm going to bed.