Ally’s Surgery

Ally has surgery yesterday to remove her mucocele. Its basically a ruptured salivary gland.

The “before” pictures above – it has been a pretty big annoyance for Ally – this large raised bump inside her lower lip.

 

On our way to the hospital. Ally asked me why I was taking a picture of her, and I said “don’t I usually take pictures of big events in your life? and she said yes, so I asked, isn’t this a big event today? And of course she agreed, and then was a good sport about the pictures the rest of the day. Getting her vitals taken during the admitting process.

Ally was so cute in her scrubs. She was also a remarkably patient patient. We arrived at the hospital at 8:00 am for her 9:30 procedure. They told us we would go down to the surgical floor around 9:00. But in the end the surgeon was running very behind and we waited in our room on the pediatric floor until 1030.

I had to put scrubs on to accompany Ally down to the surgical floor.

Ally walking down the hall to the elevator for our trip to the surgical floor. Once there they had a crown for her and crafts to do while we waited for the operating room to be open.

They let her choose her scent for her anesthesia mask – she chose bubblegum, and then she decorated her mask with stickers! I went into the OR with her, and held her hand while she went to sleep. Ally was AMAZING – so brave all morning and very well behaved. She answered all the doctors and nurses questions and did exactly what they told her to do.

I left the OR when she went to sleep and then joined Becky in the waiting room. after about 20 minutes the surgeon came out and told us the procure went fine. Ally did great, she removed the mucocele and the cyst that was underneath it and stitched her up. We waited another 10 minutes and then they called our name to tell us Ally was awake. We got back there and she was eating a popsicle! She wanted to know what her lip looked like, so I took a picture to show her. The raised sore was all gone! But her lip is swollen from the surgery and she has some dissolvable stiches in her lip.

Soon we were taken up to her room in pediatrics – Ally got to ride in the bed this trip! She watched some more TV, ate a 2nd popsicle and after about an hour we were discharged. It was 2pm when we left the hospital. Our poor little girl was tuckered out. I carried her the whole way down to the car and she sat on my lap on a bench outside the hospital while Becky got the car.

Things went down hill from here.

There was a lot of traffic on the way home. What took 15 minutes at 730am took over 30 at 2pm. And we had to make an emergency bathroom stop for Ally.

About 1 block from home (literally 1 block) Ally started feeling really nauseous and threw up in the car.

We got home, got her out of the car and into the house. She settled in our bedroom on our big bed wrapped around my arm and slept for 2 hours.

When she woke up about 5pm she tried to eat something but was nauseous again. She threw up again soon after that and fell back asleep again at 730.

At midnight she woke up again, feeling better and ate some applesauce, took some Motrin and Becky read books to her for about 30 minutes.

Then it was back to sleep.

At 345AM Ally woke me up “because she could not sleep” I got up with her, gave her some yogurt to eat and she watched a TV show. It took a long time to get back asleep, but she did about 5AM and woke up for good this morning at 710AM.

We were supposed to camping today with 2 of our friends in our Guatemala Girls group; Alice and Rosa, but Ally was feeling too poorly for us to go. She wouldn’t eat this morning and admitted she did not want to go anywhere in the car. I felt so bad for her.

We coaxed her to eat some dry Cheerios and water and gradually she has felt better today. We got in touch with Roxie, another GG friend who was unable to go camping, but available to come over for a play date! Ally was so excited that Roxie and her brother Charlie could come over.

Becky put up our small camping tent in Ally’s room this morning and the kids had fun playing in it and with Legos.

Right now Ally is watching a movie and we hope to get her to sleep early tonight. She has not had a lot to eat, but has managed to keep down her dry Cheerios, some banana mini muffins that Becky made yesterday (yummy) some watermelon and water.

I think the hardest thing as a parent is to watch your child sick and suffering, and feeling so helpless.

The hospital was in touch with us today to check on Ally and according to them her symptoms are not uncommon and nothing to worry about.