Surgery Story

Monday we went in to Children's Hospital to get the kids adenoids removed, and put a tube in Charlie's ear. Sunday night was hard. Lua was very upset. She wracked her brain trying to think of reasons to postpone the surgery to no avail. Finally, she just cried. Riaz laid with her until she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion at 10:30 at night.

In the morning Lua was calm. Maybe it was acceptance, or possibly just resignation. Charlie, having no real idea what surgery meant, was simply mad because he wasn't allowed to eat breakfast. We packed them in the car with surprisingly little resistance and met my mom at the hospital.

The staff at Children's couldn't have been nicer. I almost wished that I could go there myself when I need a hospital visit, because I've never met a kinder, more accommodating group of nurses. They put the kids at ease and by the time we sat in the waiting room for surgery, I was definitely more nervous than either Lua or Charlie. They sat there calmly playing with toys in their purple and blue hospital pajamas, waiting for someone to call their names.

Charlie's turn was first, and I was the one to walk him into the operating room with a hair cap and a long paper gown pulled over my front. Charlie's hand gripped mine as his fuzzy yellow socks shuffled down the long hallway. They brought us into the white room filled with folks in scrubs and paper face masks. I sat down in a chair and I was so grateful when they asked Charlie to sit in my lap for the sedation. The nurse spoke to him gently as she put the mask on his face, covered in the chapstick flavor he'd selected - grape. (My memory of getting my tonsils removed included sniffing some chapstick, and I thought it was that which put me to sleep. But here they put it on the mask so that the nitrous oxide doesn't smell bad). Read More...