Lucy's Ear Tubes

Well - it's been a while and I have been meaning to post in forever and have so much catching up to do. My house is an absolute mess and it seems like I have a million other things to do but I finally dug up my camera from the move (cause that is one of the HUGE things that happened since I've been away) and took some pictures! I originally hadn't been taking pictures because I accidentally deleted a bunch from my camera and had meant to try to retrieve them using some computer software or program and you aren't supposed to take new pictures that would take up the old memory but that never happened and I couldn't even remember what I lost so I just decided to forget about.

Anyway, life has been eventful. Today especially. Lucy got a tympanostomy (aka ear tubes). We thought that she might need an adenoidectomy but it ended up that her adenoids were fine. We woke up at 5:00 AM so we could leave by 5:30 AM to get to Riverton Hospital at 6:15 AM to check in for her 7:30 AM surgery. It would have been much more convenient to have had the surgery done at Primary Children's which is much closer to where we live but the ENT surgeon we chose (the father-in-law of Brandon's cousin) practices at different hospitals and we wanted to get it done as soon as possible since Lucy got her seventh ear infection this past Saturday.

So, here is the little patient, all cute in her hospital gown:

She knew something was going on since we were in this new place with all these new people and was very clingy. She was on my lap for this picture, hence, the closeness.

Here she is looking warily at the bed's remote control...

...but she decided it was safe to play with - as long as she had her lovey and blanket.

Look at that giant head of hers!

The nurses left a cute little doll on her bed which had no face but then they gave Lucy markers so she could draw a face on it. She ended up drawing all over herself and had blue marker all over her hands and legs by the time she was going in.

We mostly did a lot of waiting. Lucy got some Tylenol and some Versed to calm her down and they swept her right away from me. I was under the impression that I would be able to carry her into the surgery room and be by her side while they put her mask on with the anesthesia and then when she came out but it was all so fast. Before I knew it, they told me she was coming in and I could hear her hysterical cries coming down the hallway. I couldn't believe how difficult she was to calm down - I thought she would be kinda loopy from the meds but I guess waking up in an unfamiliar place without mom can be a little traumatizing. I was finally able to get her to calm down after several attempts to nurse her. Once comforted, she was back to her cute self, saying "dank uuu" to the nurses with her mouth full of boob. The nurses could barely get enough of her saying thank you and bye bye, in the middle of nursing, no less. I could barely get her to pull away when it was time to leave and had to ask if she wanted to see Angel or George (our cats) or Jiji (her favorite movie, Kiki's Delivery Service). Excitedly, she pulled away and said, "Andel, Doe, Jiji? Opaii (Japanese for breast), aww dun!"

Then the rest of the day, it's as if the surgery didn't even happen - she was just her happy self. Just a little more tired. The surgeon told me that her middle ear was just full of gooey mucus and that her hearing will be much more sensitive because she was probably hearing all muffled before with the mucus affecting 20-30% of her hearing. The downfall of all this is that I need to plug up her ears when she goes swimming or has a bath which is really hard to do and she can still get ear infections, but they just shouldn't be as painful because the pressure will be relieved by the tubes and we can give her a topical antibiotic instead of one that she has to take orally.

Thank goodness for modern medicine and insurance! What in the world did they do in the old days - just let their kids suffer? I've been wary of doing the surgery but after so many sleepless nights (and a Christmas cruise coming up) it was definitely time to do something. Maybe we can actually get a good night of sleep when we are on vacation...