handsful

On the way out the door, headed to the hospital.  She’s all smiles, but said she was a little nervous.

all gowned up.  Next, the woozy-inducing “pink medicine”

Checking out her arm tag.  I won’t post any pictures (or the video!) of her drug-induced state…suffice it to say that it made her very dizzy and VERY silly.  She said daddy had 3 eyes and mama had 2 mouths!

One hour later, and the surgery was over.  We were thrilled to hear that they were able to do the preferred procedure (sphincter pharyngoplasty) and it went off without any issues.  Yea!!  Here, she’s still quite out of it but waking up more and more.  She didn’t like me taking pictures!

So, I grabbed the camera when she was sleeping :)

Lainey had a few bites of pop-sicle and several sips of drinks.  The surgeon wasn’t too concerned that she take in very much that first day, and she had an IV.  She slept off and on most of the day.  Daddy stayed with Lainey that night, and I drove home around 9pm to stay with the other kids.  My mom was there, too, but I thought I had to take Abbey to her biology class in the morning.  Turns out,  my friend Sandi took care of that for me.  :)  So, I got up the next morning, took care of Dylan, and headed back to the hospital to see her.

And, Lainey was back!  No more grumpiness, in hardly any pain at all, and wanting to be up and about.  She was collecting quite a few stuffed animals at this point. She brought her puppy with her to the hospital, and then she got an elephant in pre-op, a teddy bear from the surgeon, and then another dog from special services.

They asked her what kinds of things she liked to play with, and they brought ALL of this.  Wow.  Later that afternoon, we visited a family on the same hall that we met the day before.  They adopted their little one from China a month ago, and were having her cleft lip repaired.  Such a doll!  And, our new friends are first-time parents, too.  :)

Around 4pm, we got the word that Lainey was being discharged!

On our way out, we had to check out the roof-top playground.  If it wasn’t wet, we would have stayed a while longer.  The view was really amazing!

This was taken yesterday, 2 days post-surgery.  She’s doing so well, only needs pain meds at night (and hardly needs them then, but I’m being cautious), and is very compliant with her liquid diet.  I’m pureeing everything and she’s eating it!

We got back for a follow-up next Friday.  No speech therapy for 6 weeks – she’ll actually be tested again at the hospital prior to beginning again to make sure the surgery was successful in action :)

We’re glad to have this surgery over with…now, we look ahead to Dylan’s.