So Far So Good

Well, Naomi is home now and slowly recovering from her triple surgery. She was pretty excited when we arrived at the hospital, we'd been talking about it for days and trying to explain it to her but she didn't get it and was looking forward to the part where she 'goes to sleep'. She kept asking when she would get to "go to sleep".
When the time came, I carried her back into the cold, sterile operating room... talk about uninviting! I wanted to turn around and run out! I held her on my lap while she had the mask on her face to fall asleep. I was expecting her to close her eyes and slump over on me but instead, her eyes were wide open and she had a blank stare. The nurses lifted her off me and layed her on the table. It was actually pretty awful for me. They were all swarming around her and she just layed there with her eyes glazed over staring at the ceiling. I was escorted out of the room at that point so they could fully put her out. The whole thing was nerve racking!
Here's are the 'before' pictures!




We had nothing to do at that point except wait. Which we did for about 45 minutes (not long at all). When the doctor finally came out, the first thing he said was "She needed it!". He explained that when he went in and inspected around, he saw pus... all over! There was infected pus all in and around her adenoids, all over the back of her nasal cavity and in her nose and also pus clogging up her ears. He said he's never seen so much infection in one little head before! Her left ear was completely blocked off from pus and other nasty stuff he described. To him, it looked like it was just one giant infection that just cycled over and over, that never would have had a chance to heal on it's own. She would have completely lost her hearing eventually, among other unfortunate side effects of having a bad infection in your nasal cavity,throat and ears canals.

When we walked into the recovery room to see her, she was still sleeping. All the nurses kept telling us that it's normal for the little ones to wake up fighting. I was expecting that to mean that she would be really cranky and out of sorts. Nope. She really woke up fighting. Throwing kicks and punches, throwing herself up against the bed bars, arching her back so much no one could pick her up, yelling and crying... she was twisting and turning so much that her tubes were getting all tangled up around her and the nurses had a heck of a time un-twisting her because she wasn't the least bit cooperative.

After thrashing about, she finally sat on Erics lap where she fell back asleep. She slept for about an hour or so. Waking up the second time was easier, she was still super upset but she at least wasn't fighting anyone.
Here she is asleep on Eric:


Waking up the second time:


Elle spent the day hiking around and playing at a friends house. She didn't come home until pretty late at night. Which was good because she would have been really bored with us all day! After we got home we layed Pinky on the couch and she alternated between sleeping and watching SpongeBob. After several hours she was feeling good enough to get up and be a bit more active. At one point she looked at me and said "MAMA, watch this!" and she breathed in really hard through her nose! She goes "I can SMELL"! She was so excited to now be able to breath through her nose. She went into the kitchen and started smelling all the food we have! She really liked the smell of the peanut butter but I think her favorite smell was my candle! She always 'smells' them when I go pick one out, only this time she truly COULD smell it now!

Her hearing is also completely better. I flicked on the light switch and she whipped her head around to it and asked me what that sound was. Another time we were sitting on our deck swing on the back deck, which faces the woods but a car drove past the front of our house, you could barely hear it but she asked me what that sound was. I told her it a car driving past the front. The ultimate one though was when she went to the bathroom... she came out crying and when I asked her why she was crying she replied with "I flushed the toilet and it was too loud".

Her smell and hearing are 100% better then they were before as well as her voice! She is still pretty inflamed in there, but you can tell a difference in the way she talks now vs. before. She no longer sounds like she has a perpetual cold. She words are alot sharper. it's really strange foe me and almost sounds like a different kid when she refers to me. Yes, I'm a little sad and miss her old voice, but her new and improved one is fantastic! She's the same kid only now she can hear, smell and talk better!


Today she is practically back to normal. She will be inflamed for about 6 weeks and her nose is still bleeding on and off, but as long as she's taking it easy, you'd never know she went in for surgery yesterday. I have to be diligent with the meds though, if those start to wear off, she switches pretty fast into painful crankiness. So with medicine and chilling on the couch, she's okay. It's hard to stay on the couch though because it's 88 degrees outside! I so want to go do something active! But the most avtive I'll be today is swinging with Pinky on the deck swing!
So far so good!