Update: Kam's Surgery II

It's over. PHEW! Everything went well. She has no black eye, although she was pretty shaken up after surgery. But, let's back up...

Kamryn woke up on her own this morning at 5:15. What a day to get up early. She wasn't allowed anything up to two hours before surgery, so we were concerned that she would get cranky from being hungry. Between Mike, Maddi and I, we kept her pretty occupied and it never became an issue.

We brought her to the hospital in her pajamas, per their recommendation. There really was no pre-admittance. A volunteer escorted Kam and I straight back to a private room with a little crib in it. Sounds sweet, doesn't it? Except, the crib was made of metal...silver metal bars...so it looked like a portable mini-prison cell. Mike and I found it amusing. Eventually, they allowed both Mike and I and even Maddi to stay with Kam in the surgical unit. While we waited for Dr. Oppenheim, the opthomologist, we were allowed to wheel Kamryn around the unit in a wagon. A lot of the patients waiting for surgery got a kick out of it, asking for Kamryn to visit them.

When the nurse came to take her to the operating room, they asked for any and all things that we brought that might give her comfort. She took back a binky, a little stuffed bat Maddi was carrying and wanted to give Kam, her pink 'silky bear' -- a small stuffed bear head with a mini-blanket attached, and her green, silky, frog-embroidered blanket. She wasn't wheeled away on a gurney, as I imagined, but rather carried away in the nurse's arms. They asked us to please return to the waiting room and the doctor would come get us when he was done. I was a nervous wreck. Michael was a rock. Maddi seemed bored and annoyed.

After an agonizing 10 or so minutes, Dr. Oppenheim came out to the waiting room. The surgery was a success. She has a little bit of blood in her mucus, but that's all. He spoke to us a bit about post-surgical care. She just needs eye drops for a little bit 3X a day and make sure she gets plenty of liquids, etc. He said they would come back to get us in an hour of so when she woke up and then he left.

Not five minutes later, a volunteer came over and asked me to come back with him to see Kamryn. She had woken up and was hysterical, understandably. I got her calmed down and rocked her in a rocking chair in the recovery room. The nurses checked her vitals a few times and we were then allowed to go back into the surgical unit. We changed Kam back into her pajamas. (I kept the little hospital gown they put her in!) We has some more waiting to do, so we put her back in the wagon with a pillow and her blankets and wheeled her around some more. She looked ready to pass out from exhaustion.

Finally, they released us. She didn't get sick from the anesthesia, fortunately. We got home around 9:30 and she's been asleep ever since. I took Maddi to school while Mike got ready for work. It's 11:30 now. I think I'm going to try to catch some Z's before she wakes up.

Thank you all for your calls and well-wishes. It means a lot.

I took pictures on my cell phone. I haven't quite yet figured out how to upload them to my hard drive. I'm sure Mike can help me this weekend.

Check out what Maddi's been up to here.

Love to you all...