Wordful Wednesday: Surgery Day

Valentine's Day dawned and with it, Lilah's surgery.  The O.R. was actually running ahead of schedule due to some last minute cancellations. so we were in and out of the hospital in under two hours, from start to finish.  Lilah was a rockstar.  By which I mean she raised a little hell and took no prisoners.

I learned that I'm not the only one who thinks Lilah is insanely strong for her size- it took three of us to hold her arms just so that they could put numbing cream on her hands where they would later insert the IV catheter.  More than one nurse commented on her freakish strength.



We are not amused.

Though the procedure was extremely quick and simple, it had to be done under general anesthetic, which I was pretty apprehensive about.  No matter how simple the procedure, and how grateful I was to be there for such a short time, there were a few things that were surprising and emotionally exhausting about the day.  For starters, holding your child while she thrashes about and fights the gas mask before eventually going limp in your arms is exactly as disconcerting as it sounds.  Then there's the scale of things.  Lilah has always been big for her age.  Every check-up, she measures out around the 95th percentile for height and the 75th for weight.  But seeing her in her little hospital gown on the humongous operating room table and later, on the hospital gurney, she just looked so tiny.  Miniscule, actually.  And lastly, though we had been warned that there might be a small amount of discharge from the eye, it still made my stomach drop when she cried blood-tinged tears later in the day.

But it wasn't long until she was back to desecrating books with a red crayon (it was Valentine's Day afterall):

I truly appreciated the well wishes we received.  Even for something so minor, it's really nice to know who's got your back.  There were a few words of wisdom in particular that  warmed my heart, so I just had to share:

I hear your roar, sweetie. You have every right to feel concerned. Lilah is unstoppable! She'll have both eyes squirting out tears in no time (mostly for not getting her way)...

And:

 Melodrama suggests a disproportionate reaction. You're just being a great mum- true this surgery is routine, but not for you and your crew. Be kind to yourself. Pack some chocolate for the waiting room.

(I think I may have taken that last suggestion a little too seriously.  What?  People offered heartfelt advice.  Is was my duty to follow it to the letter.  Note to self: will need to log in some extra cardio hours this week.)

I am also reading "Vanishing Acts" by Jodi Picoult.  An overarching theme of all her novels is motherhood, and this particular quote spoke to me in this week:

When you're pregnant, you an think of nthing but having your own body to yourself again; yet aferiving birth you realize tha the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sors of dangers and disappearance, so you spend th rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep her close enough for comfort.

Okay, that's it for the hand-wringing and "woe-is-me"-ing.  I promise.  It's safe to say Lilah recovered much more quickly from the ordeal than her mommy and daddy did.  And so far, the eye looks great.  If it's stays clear over the next couple of weeks, we can go ahead and assume it won't cause her any more trouble.  A relief, to say the least!

V-Day, D-Day

Well we all know tomorrow is Valentine`s Day, but you probably didn`t know that tomorrow is also the day Lilah is scheduled to have surgery. She has had a clogged tear duct since birth, and no amount of duct massage or breastmilk-soaked swabs have been able to clear it up.  This means she has to go in for what they call nasolacrymal duct probe and irrigation, a very simple, quick procedure, but one that does need to be performed under general anesthetic.  So for us, V-Day is D-Day.  This impending event is something I have been trying to put out of my head since it was scheduled in December.  Denial is one of my best defense mechanisms (along with procrastination, of course - the two really do go hand in hand).

On Friday the Surgical Day Care Department of BC Children's Hospital called me with the particulars: our surgery is scheduled for 9:50 am on Monday, and we are to present ourselves at the hospital at 8:50 am on the dot.  Lilah is not to eat anything after midnight tonight, and she is allowed water and/or apple juice until 6:50 am.  After that, no food or liquid is to pass her lips.  That should be a real barrel of monkeys.

So we'll have a hungry, cranky toddler on our hands, but it wouldn't be the first time, and it won't be the last.  It won't exactly be a picnic, but, armed with TV, a couple of new toys, and Daddy's iTouch with some freshly downloaded kid-friendly apps for the waiting room, we can survive for a few hours.

The things that make me most apprehensive about tomorrow are the unknowns.  How will she react to the anesthetic?  Will she be scared?  Will I be allowed to be there when they administer the anesthetic?  Will the procedure be successful?  How will she feel afterwards?  Will her eye be sore?  Will she forgive us for putting her through all this?

There is part of me that knows this whole thing really isn't a big deal.  But there's this other part, the mother lion fiercely protecting her cub, who's dreading tomorrow; who doesn't want to put her kid through this; who just wants it to be over and done with; who's wondering if she's going to be able to sleep tonight.  I am quite sure I'm being melodramatic about the whole affair, but when the mama lion roars, we must heed her call.

If you have any words of wisdom for me, please be sure to leave them in the comments section.