The first thing to consider about this whole ordeal is the fact that we were instructed to not give Audrey anything to eat after midnight and nothing to drink after 7:40am. Audrey doesn't usually get up in the morning until 8:30 or 9, so she didn't get ANYTHING before we headed out to the hospital. The second thing to consider is that we were instructed to check in at the hospital 2 hours prior to surgery. (Her surgery was scheduled at 11:50.) What they thought we were going to do with an almost-two-year-old in a hospital for two hours is beyond my understanding.
Mom and Dad did their best to distract Audrey and keep her relatively happy.
Here, she is using Ben's $100 calculator to make "phone calls."
Here is the "before" shot of her belly button & a shot of her vitals getting checked.
Shortly thereafter, the anesthesiologist came in and gave Audrey some "happy juice" which was some sort of concoction meant to relax her so that she didn't freak out when she was taken away from us for the surgery. This stuff didn't really relax her, it just made her super drunk and EVERYTHING was hilarious to her. When they finally did take her for the surgery, she didn't get sad until she realized that we weren't going with her... THEN she got upset.
Ben and I waited in another area for the short operation to be done and over with. We were told it would take about 45 minutes... an hour later we started to wonder (especially since they called a CODE BLUE at one point.. eek). An hour and fifteen minutes later I was starting to get a little worried. At that point, the doctor finally came out and said that the reason everything took so long is that the hernia turned out to be bigger than they originally thought and he also had to stitch up Audrey's belly button three times. Wait.. what? Three times?
Yeah. He sewed it up the first time, the nurses thought it looked great but he just didn't think it looked right. So he sewed it up again... He still wasn't satisfied, so he sewed it up a THIRD time. He said that he would have wanted it to look nice if it had been his daughter, so that's why he was so picky about it... that was nice and it made us feel a whole lot better. A few minutes later, we were allowed to go back and see Audrey.
Who was screaming at the top of her lungs and trying to crawl off the gurney. They knocked her out again and so we got to sit and watch her sleep. She fell asleep head-down on the gurney and none of us felt that it was important enough to switch her round.
After about an hour, she woke up again and was really unhappy about it.
All she wanted to do was be held and cuddled and be allowed to cry. It was pretty heartbreaking. She got a popsicle for troubles and took a ride on a wheelchair with Mom while Dad went to get the van. The next couple of days were pretty awful. She was in a rotten mood and didn't want anything even though she wanted everything. It's only been in the last day or two that she has been in a regular, decent mood.
Today, we went down to the hospital for her post-op checkup. The nurse removed the dressing, looked at Audrey's booboo and said everything looks good. We took a picture of her regular belly button, though it's kindof hard to see. She wouldn't let us take a closeup of it which Jen will probably be happy about.. (she has a couple of tiny scabs)
So there you have it. Nearly two years of staring at and worrying about one belly button and now we'll spend the next couple trying to get used to her new one.
