March

Sierra was silly and in great spirits while waiting for her surgery!

Since she was already being a goof they recommended that we didn't give her the "happy juice" prior to her surgery. 

She did not like the provided outfit!

 

Silly but still nervous.  Both of us.

So hard to watch your baby be wheeled away.

The recovery room was ROUGH.  When they got the pain under control she slept.

 

Flowers and a giant balloon from Grandma and PopPop

Just a few days after surgery... ready to play!

Garden season is here.  These guys are so helpful :)

It's March!  Surgery month.  I've been trying everything to keep Sierra healthy but 10 days before surgery she ended up on an antibiotic for bronchitis.  Only the second time on an antibiotic in her life and luckily it was just once a day for 5 days.  I decided to keep her home the three days before surgery because I wanted her healthy.  Her cough went away and she ended up re-cooperating in time.  Saying that I was a nervous wreck is putting it mildly.  I somehow managed to put on a brave face for her though.  I didn't want my fear to add to her own.  She did great until a couple days before surgery when she realized it was getting close.   She had a lot of questions that I tried to answer simply, but in reality I wasn't sure of all of the answers myself.  

The younger kiddos get to have their surgeries first so we had to be at the Albany hospital early and there was only one surgery before her.  She was calm and sweet the whole ride to the hospital.  I sat in the back seat and held her hand which she thought was great.  We got checked in and waited and she charmed all of the staff.  She's just that kind of girl.  They all recommended we didn't give her the calming sedative before they took her back because she was calm, happy, and her sweet self.  They let her color and let her know what to expect, and after checking her out thoroughly, wheeled her away.  She didn't cry, but she looked scared.  I managed to hold it together.  I cannot imagine what parents go through that have children that have to go through many procedures.  It must just kill them.  

Surgery lasted about 25 minutes and they brought her to the recovery room.  I could hear her crying for me but they didn't bring her in to where we were for a while.  The first thing she said was, "You said it would be short but it wasn't.  I needed you and you weren't there."  It just about killed me.  She also cried, "I want my tonsils back!"  She was in a lot of pain and was angry about her IV, and was mad at me.  She didn't want me to talk or touch her.  I smiled.  Because that's just not her.  And I know that.  It took quite a while to get the pain under control and once it was, she slept for a little bit.  They told me she would probably puke and that she would sleep a lot.  Neither of those things happened.  After she woke up and wasn't hurting so bad we headed home.  She sang to the songs on the radio and stayed awake the whole way.  I just stared at her because it was not at all what I expected.

The told us the most important thing was to keep up on pain meds and keep her hydrated.  The poor girl didn't want to swallow her own spit and went through a box of Kleenex instead.  So getting her to drink took effort but she is old enough to know that it's important.  She stayed awake the whole day and even managed to play for a bit several times when her meds would first kick in.  She was sweet and grateful but when she would really start hurting, she'd get mad.  Everything I did during those moments made her mad.  She reminded me so much of her daddy.  I took care of him after his surgery and hospital stays and sure do remember!

She ate a bunch of boiled egg whites and some sherbet and she passed out around 7 the first night.  She woke around 11 angry and hurting and it was such a fight to get her to take her medicine at that point.  She was screaming and crying which makes a raw throat hurt worse.  Once the medicine kicked back in she slept and I woke her up at 4 to take more medicine.  Which again made her mad.  But then she slept again until around 7. 

The first two days were pretty rough.  She wasn't a fan of  the taste of the medicine and didn't like swallowing anything.  But after the 2nd day things improved dramatically.  She wanted to eat everything, wanted to play, and when I'd go to give her meds, she'd say she didn't need them.  The first time she said that I was really weary, because I wondered if she'd all of a sudden get too far past the meds and it would be horrible.  But she did fine and only needed medicine before bed and first thing in the morning.  She was a champ.  We were prepared for a good 7 days of pain and sleeping.  That's what the Dr's, hospital staff, and people that had kiddos who'd had the surgery told us to expect.  But she handled everything so well and was back to eating pretty normally on the 4th day and ended up going to town with Aunt Amy and Uncle Ben because they came to visit.  I was so nervous about it but she did great.

The amazing thing is how the second those babies came out she stopped breathing loud, snoring, and the apnea disappeared.  We could tell when she fell asleep after surgery that things were going to be very different.  Even with the pain and swelling from surgery, you could hardly hear her breathing.  One of the nurses that was in during her surgery said, "Those things were huge!  I'm surprised she could breathe!"  But really, she certainly hadn't been breathing well.  She of course had the apnea at night, but also had started keeping her mouth open a lot during the day in order to breathe better.  Poor girl.   I'm so happy we went ahead with the surgery and am looking forward to better sleep for all of us!

I also kicked the dog out of the house this month.  I was sick of having her in the house.  She's big enough to handle being outside full time now, and has done great things for my sanity.  I do get nervous about her running off, but she's such a wimp I think she will stay close to home.  I check on her frequently and so far she's always super close to the house.  She's really grown and weighs more than Jaxon now.  They are such great friends and he misses having her inside, but for the most part all they did together was get into trouble, so it's nice to have them separated.  I'm hoping that we can be healthy again for a while, Sierra will start sleeping better, the dog will be a DOG and live OUTSIDE, and my sanity will continue to improve.  Whew!