Surgery Day for My Princess

My Princess, Norah, had surgery today.  She had her adenoids removed.  For the better part of the last 4 years she's fought so many sinus infections.  She always seemed to be so stuffy in the nose and never looked like she slept a full night.  We've held off on doing surgery for at least a year now.  Unfortunately, Norah is allergic to so many different types of antibiotics that we really needed to consider surgery.  Interestingly enough, the allergist is the one doctor that really encouraged that we look into getting the adenoids removed.  She said it will make a world of difference.

 A couple of weeks later, we went back to the Otolaryngologist (ENT) and after I said that she's allergic to additional antibiotics and she has been suffering from a sinus issue since September, she just said its a GO!  She needs the surgery to remove the adenoids.  She even declined doing the sinus "scope" because she knew what she was going to see!

So today was surgery day.  We left the house at 8 am so that we could get there in plenty of time to sit and wait.  As usual, the surgical center and surgeon were running behind schedule.  We were suppose to be there by 9:15am with the assumption that surgery was going to happen some time around 10:15am.  She finally went back into the OR around 11:45am.  She was out of surgery at roughly 12:00pm - 15 minutes.  Enough time for my husband to grab lunch from the cafeteria, bring it up for him to scarf down a burger and me to eat half of a chicken burrito.  That was some seriously quick surgery!  We come to find out after the surgery that her poor nose was blocked by 60% because her adenoids were that large - it was the right thing to do, removing them!

Prior to surgery they gave Norah some "la la juice" as I like to call it (better known as Versed).  It took some time to kick in but Norah started to hallucinate.  The anesthesiologist was getting a kick out of her because she was getting all goofy on us - much like a teenager over-training with alcohol for the very first time.

Because I'm "MOM" - I typically get the dubious honor of walking my kids to the OR and waiting for them until they are sufficiently out with "gas" and then I get walked out to the waiting room.  Its such a heart wrenching thing to do - to walk your child into surgery, know that afterwards they probably aren't going to feel really well and that you are putting your child's health and safety in the hands of essentially strangers.  You always hope and pray that your child doesn't fall on the lowest statistic of surgical and anesthesia complications.  After my son's endoscopy complication, I'm much more gun shy (or better stated - surgical/medical procedure shy).

I've seen inside more OR's then I'd really like to see.  However, I'm blessed that things went well today for my daughter.  She didn't come out of recovery as easily and pleasantly as I'd hoped for.  She did a lot of screaming and crying - which the nurse and anesthesiologist both believe was her reaction to the anesthesia rather than the surgical procedure itself.  Once the pain medicine kicked in and the dose of tylenol was given, and she was allowed to fall back asleep for another hour she woke up infinitely better.  I'll admit, I was really worried - because she was screaming and crying pretty badly.

She is home now, resting on the couch watching T.V.  She's eaten two cheese sticks and yogurt and drank some juice so I think she's doing pretty darn good!  Lets hope the rest of the day, evening and overnight are just as uneventful!

Thank you God for keeping her safe and letting her get through this surgery without incident!