Yesterday after school, all the kids and I went and picked Reed up at his work's office in Pocatello and off we drove to Ogden. We settled into our motel, watched a quick episode of Arthur and then off to sleep for all of us.
The alarm went off at 7. I quickly did my workout and by the time I was done, all the kids were milling around me. Since I knew we had to be at the surgery center at 9:30, I hurried all the kids except Aftyn off to breakfast with me. Aftyn couldn't eat because of her surgery so she and Reed watched Leave it to Beaver. After about 20-ish minutes and full of yummy food, we went back upstairs to get everyone dressed and gave Reed time to go and have his own quiet breakfast by himself. By the time he came back, I had kids dressed and hair done. Another 20-ish minutes and we were all packed up and out to the car with everything we had brought in the night before. Reed got confused and ended up taking us to the wrong place but got us where we needed to be in the end.
15 minutes after checking in, in a fairly small waiting room where there wasn't enough room for all of our family to sit together, Aftyn's name was called and she and I headed back to get her ready for her surgery. Good thing Reed and I had gone through this whole thing before with Mirren, we knew what to expect so we had already worked out who was doing what since we always needed one of us with the other kids and one of us with Aftyn. We got her dressed in her gown, put some large adult socks on her smaller child-sized feet and waited. We waited a while but the nurse came and tried to put an iv in Aftyn while we waited. That was interesting. We played I Spy. That was pretty fun. We told funny knock knock jokes. Those made us laugh. Through it all, poor Aftyn kept telling me with a smile on her face how nervous she was. How her stomach had butterflies. Then came our doctor. After a quick chat, then came our anesthesiologist who was tall and friendly. He was trying to make the situation as light and non-scary as possible, which I appreciated. Then off they went back behind those double doors that I couldn't go behind, so I headed back out to the waiting room to hand off the baton to Reed who would be waiting for her through surgery and would go back with her while she woke up enough to come out and hop in the car with the rest of us.
I took the kids to the local Smith's where we purchased some treats to hopefully entice Aftyn that she wanted to eat and some juice that might do the same after her surgery. We went and got some fast food for everyone to eat so that when Aftyn was done, we could just make the couple hour trip home as quickly as possible. When we got back to the surgery center, Aftyn was waking up but not enough for Reed to go back yet so I took the kids back out to the car and fed them lunch. Tried to kill some time and keep them contained and calm. Aftyn was taking longer than Mirren had because she felt much more nauseous than Mirren had. She would be fine, but then stand up and suddenly feel like throwing up. She and Reed were back in the recovery room for about 40 minutes, I would say. It was long waiting out in the parking lot, texting every 5 or so minutes to get an update. Finally, I saw Reed standing at the front doors! With Aftyn!!
We quickly picked them up and I could tell Aftyn did not feel good. It took her about an hour and a half to feel good enough to eat anything. She didn't want to eat or drink or open her eyes or anything until an hour and a half had passed. Once that time passed, we had a good hour where everything was happy and great and good. Right about that time, we were dropping Reed back off at his truck in Pocatello and Aftyn started crying that her stomach was REALLY hurting and she just wanted to be home. Ugh. So sad to have your child crying and feeling helpless as to how to help them.
We sped home and dealt with poor Aftyn not feeling good for the first part of that 45 minute drive but by the end she was back to feeling good, just really needing to stretch out and lay down horizontally. We got home and she did just that. Being home has helped her immensely!
Fast forward a couple of hours to when I had to do her second dose of antibiotic cream in her eyes. Oh my heck. She cried and was in so much pain. It just hurts my heart so much to watch her lay sobbing on the couch and saying how much it was stinging. :( But I kept reassuring her that it wouldn't always be so painful, that this pain was just temporary and it would get better.
And now, she's peacefully sleeping on the couch, her choice for the night. Pretty positive any ideas I had of her going back to school tomorrow are in the past and I just want to focus on her getting back to feeling 100% well again. Her eyes are blurry sometimes, they water sometimes, they hurt sometimes, they are sensitive and the light hurts them sometimes. But all of these things will go away and her eyes will benefit from this surgery and that is the thing we have to focus on even when the pain is bad or something seems so bad in that moment. It is just temporary and we can get through anything moment by moment until it gets better. Here's to tomorrow and hope.
5 comments:
Sad! Get well soon Aftyn!
Sad! Get well soon Aftyn!
Poor Aftyn! Get well soon! What kind of surgery did she have to have?
She had strabismus surgery on both both eyes. On the outside of both her eyes. I'll try to post a picture of her eyes so you can see how it looks. Basically, her muscles on the outsides of both of her eyes was pulling her eyes to rest in more of a "v" than straight forward and her muscles weren't strong enough anymore to keep them pulled straight all the time, thus affecting her vision and she was seeing lots of double. Hopefully if this surgery has been successful, it will fix that for a few years. There is no promise that with her still growing that her eye muscles won't change as she grows, so we know there is a likelihood that she may need it again, but hopefully not until she's closer to 16.
I read about this right after the surgery, but couldn't figure out how to log myself in to leave a comment. That sounds like a very stressful time for all of you. I'm glad she could get the surgery and hope she is recovering well and that it's doing what it was supposed to. She's such a cutie. This is funny, but almost every other day, Camille asks if we can have Aftyn come play. She just loves her, despite the age gap. I think it's so sweet.
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