Hillary's Surgery

Today's guest blogger is my wife Susan, who took Hillary in for her surgery this morning and reports on how it all went:

I don't know that all of you know this, but Hillary had surgery today. She had PE tubes put into both ears--she'll tell you it was "because I had fluid in my ears and needed to hear better."

We checked in at 7:30 this morning and then went back to do the height/weight and paperwork. There was a little problem--Kevin had taken Hillary to her appointment last week, and the consent form said the doctor talked to "Hillary and her father." I couldn't sign the consent form. So they had to get Dr. Lapp to come in before his first surgery to tell me what he had already told Kevin, and then I could sign the form. We went back out into the waiting room and then immediately were called in to the pre-op room.

Hillary didn't have to wear a hospital gown, so she just climbed up into the bed. She got to put her shoes into a bag to take with her, covered up with the warmed blanket they provided, chose "grape" as the scent for her mask, and sang a couple of songs to pass the time while we waited. She was very excited about getting to go for a ride in the bed to the operating room--and she had her giraffe, Melvin, to keep her company. She gave me a kiss, told the nurses she hoped they'd push the bed fast, and was off.

About 20 minutes later, Dr. Lapp found me in the waiting room. The surgery went well. He first suctioned the fluid out from behind the eardrums--he said it had been there a while and was "thick, like pus or mucus." Isn't that a nice picture? Hillary will need to use eardrops for a couple of days to make sure that any remaining fluid doesn't plug the tubes.

About two minutes later, they called to tell me Hillary was on her way to the recovery room. I got there just before she did, and she started to cry a little and try to climb out of the bed when she saw me. Her first question was, "Where are my shoes?" We sat in the rocking chair for about five minutes, and she cried and whimpered. It was very sad. Then she threw up a little mucus--and then she asked for a popsicle! She ate her red popsicle, drank a little Sprite, and kept asking for her shoes so she could leave! Twenty minutes after she arrived back in the room, we were on our way!

We made a stop at the pharmacy to get Tylenol and her ear drops, then I took Hillary to Lana's [her daycare provider]. Hillary was very excited to show the other kids the coloring book that she got from the nurses about what happens at Same Day Surgery and the stickers she got for being such a good girl! She's also pretty excited about the free French fries from McDonalds that came with a "Certificate of Bravery" for her good behavior.

The tubes will stay in anywhere from about six months to one year and should come out on their own. Because the fluid is gone, her hearing will immediately improve--and I could tell a difference already when she was sitting in my lap. I whispered, "Hillary, I love you!" and she smiled and whispered back, "I love you too, Mommy!"