Surgery Day

It was an exhausting day. Not physically exhausting, just mentally zapping. Julia's cut-off for eating was 7pm last night (shhhhh....we gave her a last bottle at 8pm). She was up to 11 ounces at that point, which isn't very much. But, surprisingly, she slept until 4am without waking up. At 4am, we offered water. Have I said that Julia does not like water? She likes a sip or two of water with dinner, but H2O that comes out of a bottle is pretty much poisonous to her. So after drinking a few sips of waters, she went back to sleep at 6am. At this point, she hadn't drank anything for 10 hours. We offered water; nope, she refused. Have I told you that she's strong-willed?

From 6am - 8am we tried to get her to drink water. Still no go. At 8:10am she ate an ounce. Yes, we went over the deadline yet again. But an ounce of water is better than nothing. Julia was starting to get cranky. The funny part is that she wasn't showing hunger cues. Just a little PO'ed and getting tired.

At 9am, we left for Seattle, using traffic as a justification for leaving early. Honestly, we needed a change of scenery and were hoping she would fall asleep in the car. Yay, she did! She slept all the way to Seattle.

Children's Hospital is quite a big place but easy to navigate. We checked in at the first desk to get ourselves badges. Then we checked in at the second place to get her checked in. Then we went to the surgery center. At this point, we were really early. It was 10:10am, and we were scheduled to check in at Desk #1 at 10:30am. They took her right away.

The nurse took all her stats, and Julia really started to be lethargic. If people are messing with her, she's usually right in their face and checking out the equipment. But she just laid there. Not really whining or anything. Just looking at you with big, sad eyes. Without food for so long, all her fire was gone. I hadn't ever seen her fire gone before. That broke my heart.

Her surgery was scheduled for noon, but it was only 11:00. I was hoping that the show would go on early, but who had ever heard of that? The anaesthesiologist came to talk to us, then our doctor. It looked like we were going to get her in early. Yes!

I carried a very un-feisty Julia to the operating room. S went to the lobby to wait since only one of us could go in. I put her on the operating table. She was so tiny on it; it broke my heart. Under normal circumstances, if you laid Julia on a table with a big light looking down at her, she would be off that table in a matter of seconds. But lethargic Julia just laid there. I stroked her cheek and held her hand. The put the gas mask on her, and she didn't even try to yank it off. She fell asleep within a few minutes, and I left.

They told us a zillion times that it would only take 15 minutes. We sat in the lobby for 30 minutes, and I was getting really concerned. Don't tell me it will take such a short time and then make me wait longer. Of course, pessimistic me thinks something went very wrong.

The doctor comes out finally and shows us some pictures. He tells us it's her esophagus, stomach, and going into her intestines, but it could be anything for all I know. Pink tissue-y looking stuff. He says things look okay, but they took biopsies. She has been wheeled into recovery. He leaves, and we sigh with relief.

Within a minute, a nurse comes to get us because Julia's starting to wake up. I go in and hear the familiar Julia scream from down the hall. But she has worked herself to a level that I hadn't heard in a long time. It's more the screams of WHERE AM I? WHY DOES MY THROAT HURT? WHO ARE YOU? GET ME OUT OF HERE....NOW!!! I had to smile because my girl was finally back. Who knew I would miss all that feistiness?

Two nurses are trying to calm her down. Ha, good luck! Julia is sharing the recovery room with a 10-year old girl. Poor girl and her mother have to listen to Miss J scream her head off. (Children's Hospital, shouldn't each person have the dignity of their own recovery room?) Once she escalates, she is hard to calm down. I'm trying to calm her down, to no avail, because the nurse is trying to take her off all the monitors, IVs, etc. They want me to feed her, but it's kind of difficult with her so out of control and the nurses keep messing with her. After she's off all the equipment, I sit down and feed her. After 2 ounces, I take the bottle away. They're concerned about her vomiting. After initially being a little angry, she starts to calm down. She's coughing and seems so hoarse. I bet her throat hurts. I ask the nurse for Tylenol for her. They give her a pretty heavy dose of it. By the time she and I leave the surgery wing, she's doing better. Once she sees Daddy, she gets happy. We put her into her car seat, gather all our bags, and off we go. When we get into the car, I try to feed her again, but the Tylenol must have started to kick in, and she nods off. She slept all the way home and then for the next 3 hours, only waking up to eat. And she's eaten 9 oz since 11:45am!

The biopsy results take 2 weeks. The doctor wants us to get a swallow study done. Back to Children's Hospital for another exhausting day.

All in all, it went okay. It was hard to withhold food from her, and it was so sad to see her so lethargic right before surgery.