Grammy and Grampy spent the night last night and put Charlie on the bus this morning, as Mike and I had to be out the door to the hospital with Amelia at 6:45am.
Amelia, who couldn't eat or drink after midnight, was nonetheless happy as a clam and awfully excited to go to the hospital ;-)
She pranced down the halls, obediently waited in registration while I filled out forms, and happily played in the waiting room while we waited to be brought to the pre-op area. She even had fun changing into her little Johnny and found it very amusing that Mike and I had to wear johnnies over our clothes to go into the OR with her.
I thought she'd freak out when the dentist came out to meet with us but she wasn't fazed by this either, even though she is terrified of him in the dentist office. I don't think she actually recognized him, since he was in scrubs and a surgical hat.
Amelia was still happy right up to when she was brought into the OR and they administered the anaesthesia -- she obediently breathed in while the doctor counted to 10 -- she got to about seven until the anaesthesia started to take effect and then she fought like a little wildcat, kicking the anaesthesiologist and clawing the mask away from her face. They had warned us that this might happen but I think we were all caught off guard because she had been so compliant up until that. Once they finally got her under they let us each give her a quick kiss and then whisked us out to the waiting room.
The surgery itself took a lot shorter than we thought -- they had warned us that it would take them a good 20 minutes just to get X-rays done and get her prepped and that it could take to an hour or hour and a half after that depending on if there were any cavities that needed to be filled or any other unforeseen work that needed to be done in addition to the caps being put on her molars. Fortunately there was not --Mike and I went to the cafeteria to grab something to eat and then spent maybe another 20 minutes in the waiting room before the dentist came back to let us know that everything had gone smoothly and that we could head into recovery, where he said she "wasn't happy" but had been successfully extubated.
It turned out "wasn't happy" was an understatement -- poor Amelia still couldn't talk and her nose was bleeding from the breathing tube; she was completely beside herself, clawing her Johnny off, clawing her ID bracelet off and trying desperately to get the IV out of her foot (which they had put in while she was asleep.)
When she could finally talk she just yelled "I want to go home!" and "No thank you! No thank you!" to any nurses' questions of did she want juice, water or a Popsicle. They finally obliged and took the IV out but then needed to get 3 sets of "good" vital signs, to which thrashing Amelia was not amenable at all. They finally managed to get them done and got us out the door, at which point Amelia calmed down considerably.
By the time we got home she was giving us little smiles and was almost able to talk normally. By the time we had been home for an hour she had eaten two cups of jell-O and was resting comfortably.
An hour or two after that she was completely back to her old self and by the time Charlie got home you never would've guessed what her morning had been like. He came right up to her and said "Amelia how was the hospital??" to which Amelia replied "Great!!" Then she opened her mouth wide to show off her caps: "Look I have braces!!"
Here is a picture of her happy in the pre-op area and one of her less happy but home eating jell-O. We're glad the ordeal is over!
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