Things went well, as I said before. And thanks for your well wishes!
We woke up promptly at 4:30 a.m. because we had to be downtown at Texas Children's Hospital at 7:30 a.m. We checked in and went to the waiting area. Rachel slept, thank God. We were herded into one room where they weighed her (13 pounds 8 oz!) and took her blood pressure with a tiny little cuff. Then we were herded into another room where they took some blood from her. She was good the entire time. Then we were put into a waiting room where the people waiting for surgery are kept. The doctor comes into this room to talk to the parents before surgery. At this point I did an unscientific survey and realized 5 out of every 6 surgeries on children under 10 are due to foreign objects injected into various body orifices. The boy beside us put something up his nose (I tried to evesdrop to figure out what it was, but I missed it). The girl to the right of us swallowed a coin. There was a x-ray carried across the room that was clearly a chest with something stuck in the esophogus.
Luckily she was sleeping when I had to hand her over for surgery. If she was crying I don't think I could have handled it.
They brought us into recovery about an hour later. There she was, screaming her little head off, which I was unusually happy to hear. They told us we would be in recovery about an hour until they got our room ready. What they DIDN'T tell us is they meant an hour in football minutes, because we sat there for five hours.
We finally got to her room. Texas Children's hospital rocks. They have a day bed for parents in the room, cable TV, a room for each age group of children from 3-18 with age-appropriate toys, videos, etc. A clown that visits, videos to bring to the room, a family center with a refrigerator, free coffee and muffins in the morning.
The surgeons, well, they're good surgeons. Their bedside manner was, well, something else.
We were given a paste to put on her butt to numb it so the stitches didn't hurt so bad. However, she had an allergic reaction to it. So, the nurse gave us some skin drying paste and some vaseline. He said put the paste on first to dry the skin then the vaseline. It didn't have the numbing agent, but keeping the sutures on her anal opening dry would help.
Guess what? Paste + vaseline = glue. Yes, we glued my childs butt cheeks together. I had to soak her in the bathtub to loosen the "glue" to get them apart. Who said child rearing wasn't a science experiment? Come to think of it, maybe I should market the stuff to pay for her medical bills.
We came home Sat evening. With the exception of a little fussiness, as to be expected, she is doing great!
Question: Have you ever made an interesting discovery?
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