Surgery Has Been Booked

Whelp, I scheduled Riley's ATTT surgery this week for 2/20/14.  It actually felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders as soon as we we on the schedule.  I opted for John Muir versus Lucille Packard due to proximity.  Both kids were born at John Muir and we were more than pleased with our care there.  They told us it would be out patient surgery which has me a bit concerned.  I have heard the first few days are really rough following the operation from a pain perspective so I was hoping to actually stay the night and have the help of the nurses but my mom is coming up to help us with Jacob so we can focus on Ri so hopefully we will be ok.  Ri knows, this weekend she asked me what surgery means.  Oy, the questions this girl comes up with, she really tests my parenting skills!  I was hoping she wouldn't ask too many questions, I think the less she knows about what goes into a surgery, the better.  I told her it just means that Dr H will fix her foot for good and she won't need an AFO anymore.  Of course she said she likes her AFO in response to that, only my child!  I told her if she didn't need her AFO, that she could pick any pair of shoes she wanted which seemed to sell her on it for a bit.  We start casting on January 24th.

I think there just might be a light at the end of this tunnel.  I'm very optimistic about the outcome, hopefully not not overly optimistic.

Tubes

Super behind on blogging, I feel like all I do is work and when I'm not working, I'm trying to spend as much time with the kiddos as possible which leaves little time for blogging, let alone getting my toes done, eye brows waxed, watch fixed and going to the mall to try to find a new pair of jeans which I need desperately (since I wear jeans to work almost every day).  Oh and sleep, sleep would be good too.

Thursday I took the day off and took Jake-os down to get tubes put in his ears.  Overall it went very well, the hardest part was really just waiting for them to take him back.  I got there at 6:20 (in the am!) and they didn't take him back until 7:30 so he got very antsy.  Around 7:10 they gave him a sedative which made him very sleepy and very giggly but because it made him so relaxed I had to hold him and not let him walk around the waiting room that they had us in.  That was a challenge.  Marc took Riley to day care at 6:30 so with traffic he didn't get to the surgery center until just before they took Jake-os back.  Around 7:15/7:20 Jacob was getting super mellow which was nice, he just laid in my arms.  The anesthesiologist and the ENT came back and talked to us and at 7:30 on the dot they wheeled Jacob back, the anesthesiologist was great and kept assuring me that Jacob would be ok, that there was more of a risk of us driving every day than there was with him under the general anesthesia (I was more nervous for him to go back there and have anesthesia than I was with Riley, I think because of his asthma but Riley, while much smaller, seems much tougher than Jacob and I seem to worry about her less.  Perhaps because she faced so much more at a younger age than he ever had to so I know she can handle anything).  The anesthesiologist gave Jake-os his stethoscope to hold because he was obsessed with it and I walked back to the OR door with them.  No tears, at least from Jake-os. 

15 minutes later, the ENT was back and everything went great, Jacob was in recovery and doing well.  As Marc said, he spends more time in the bathroom than it took for them to do the procedure.  When we got back there I was expecting screaming, unruly baby but he hadn't quite woken up yet.  He was coughing a bit which the anesthesiologist told us about but he monitored him closely.  He was a little fussy but they handed him over to me and he settled right into my arms and fell asleep for over an hour and slept off the anesthesia.  I LOVED cradling him and him sleeping in my arms, literally at this stage in his constant movement I will take the cuddles wherever I can get them.

As promised we were on our way home by 9:30 after 2 Popsicles and some crackers.  I got him home around 10AM and I put him down for a nap to sleep off the anesthesia.  He slept for 2 hours and then it was pretty much like nothing had happened.  He was a little fussy and clingy but overall did great, we even managed to sneak out of the house for a bit and ran to the outlet mall to return some stuff and treated ourselves to a Starbucks (milk for Jacob and coffee for me).

Waiting for his turn in the OR

Post surgery and 2 Popsicles later (I had to cut him off from the Popsicles, he kept asking for more!)

Sweet baby boy!

Keeping himself busy before surgery

Sneaking out to run some errands after surgery

Lunch time, who would have ever guessed he had surgery that morning!

Present from Nana!

Friday Jacob went to day care and they told me they would keep an eye on him.  I picked him up of course later than I wanted to thanks to work being absolutely out of control and I noticed his ear was super oozy and bloody (they told me they had been draining and they had been cleaning them up throughout the day), I freaked out and put in a panicked call to the Dr, of course it was 5:05 and they were gone but I finally got an operator who put me through to the ENT on call, I was in such a panic.  I got lucky and it was Jacob's ENT who said he was not at all surprised given what he saw in the OR, that there was a ton of fluid and so it's now all draining out and it's totally normal so he put Jacob on an ear drop for both ears and we go back for his normal post-op appointment Friday.  Riley was very concerned about his ears on Friday.  They were seriously gross, even I was gagging but when I came in from unloading the car I found her cleaning his ears. She had gone into the bathroom and wet a tissue and was wiping his ear down because she was so concerned about it.  Such my sweet girl!

Surgery Was a Success

Well I'll start with Riley's ear surgery and work backwards in time.  Everything went great, she was a total trooper and though she was a little scared we worked through it.  We got to Fremont at 6:30 with both kids in tow and all of the nurses immediately loved Riley.  Back in pre-op she was a little scared and wouldn't wear the hair net and wouldn't take the oral sedative that they gave her but other than that she did fantastic and cooperated fully.  We got enough sedative in her that she didn't fight going back to the OR, she was able to take her favorite stuffed animal "Birthday," her froggy lovie, and they gave her a stuffed dog so she felt secure.  She was also hilarious drugged.  The Dr and nurses told us to video it and use it as blackmail.  So go ahead and have yourselves a good laugh:, we sure did

The procedure was all of maybe 20 minutes, the Dr came out and said everything went great, the tubes had come out and were stuck in the wax that was in her ear canals.  He said we could have shot the ear canals with a squirt gun of drops and it would have never dissolved the wax so he was glad that we did the cleaning and removal now because it was inevitable.  Luckily the tubes were out so Riley has no restrictions and he said her ears look so great that he doesn't need to see her for a post-op appointment.  I may still keep the hearing test but cancel her appointment with him.  She came out of anesthesia SUPER easy this time.  Last time she was screaming and was hysterical and nothing would calm her down.  Today we walked in and she was laying on the bed super mellow, eating an Otter Pop.  She did keep asking me the same questions over and over which the nurse said was normal with the sedative.  She was totally normal when we got home. 

Post Surgery bagel and Dora

Here are the tubes, they are hard to see but they are right there in the middle

 Now I get to enjoy my day off, Marc dropped Jacob at day care and I'm spending some time with Riley before we get him in the early afternoon.  Per the big girl's request we'll head down to the park and Farmer's Market later this afternoon.