e-mail
So, Anna had her surgery yesterday and is doing fine. She was totally hysterical the morning of her surgery at the hospital – more freaked out after the actual procedure than before. They let me come into the operating room with her and then I had to leave after they put her to sleep. I cried when I left. She was so scared – it was so scary – and there was nothing I could do to help her.
The worst of it, I think, was that when she woke up, I wasn’t there to comfort her. Even after they called me to come to her she wouldn’t stop crying – sobbing and screaming – until we got home. She had slept so very little the night before that she actually fell asleep easily when we got home and stayed sleeping for most of the day.
When she woke up, she was back to my normal kid. She got up in the early afternoon, stood up on the bed and announced that she had a good dream – dreaming about Daddy – and would I come play with her in her room?
So that was the nice part of the day. Here are some snippets of conversation from our short stay at the hospital:
Nurse #1: “So, um, what is your relation to the child?”
Me: “She is my daughter.”
Nurse: “Uh huh. And you’ve had her since birth?”
Me: (thinking: where on your form is this question?)
“No, she was about 14 months when she came to us.”
Nurse: “And when did she have the tubes put in? With you?”
Me: “While she was in foster care at about a year old.”
Me: (thinking: here it comes!)
Nurse: “Oh that’s so wonderful! You’re amazing! I always – ”
Me: “No, really I’m not. This is just our life.”
Nurse #2: “So, are you ‘Mom’?
Me: “Yes.”
Nurse #2: “Okay, Mom, I’m going to have a Child Life Specialist come in to talk to you about the procedure and….”
Me: (thinking: see how easy that was?)
Anesthesiologist (in operating room): “Okay, lay him down.”
Me: “She’s a she.”
But now, like I said, Anna is back to her usual off-the-wall self and all is well with the world.
