Hospital Story, Part 2

So Dean and I left Amelia with the surgeons. We walked back up to our room where Dean's parents were waiting with dinner. It was hard to leave Amelia and I was scared but I also knew that she definitely was not going to get better without surgery. And we felt very good about the care she was getting at The Children's Hospital.

On yet another side note I want to say how amazing this hospital is. You should take some time to look at their virtual tour. It is a beautiful place and remarkably cheerful considering the fact that it is filled with sick kids. Every detail seems designed to engage children. It is filled with toys and sculptures and aquariums to play with and look at. Even the floors are beautiful--the main lobby floor is a collage of colorful birds and butterflies, and the floors in the elevator are studded with beads and glittery squiggles. And they have all these little red wagons for the kids to ride around in. There are playrooms and a library. There is a free daycare for siblings. There is a fabulous omelet bar in the cafeteria, and they make great pancakes too.

We had left Amelia for surgery at 6:20 PM, and the nurse said she would give us a call at 7:30 to let us know how things were going. As 7:30 approached and then passed, I got that nervous, faint-y feeling again. On the one hand, as I mentioned before, hospital time is not like real time. On the other hand, she had said "at" 7:30, not "around" or "close to" or something like that. She had said she would call us on the surgery waiting room phone if she couldn't reach Dean's cell, so I left Dean and his parents in the room and went back down to the waiting room. Then I was even more nervous there, so I called Luli and the nurse had just called Dean. When I got back up Dean relayed the nurse's report that Dr. Bruny had done everything she wanted to do, and we could meet the surgeons down in the waiting room in about twenty minutes.

So we went down and waited. When Dr. Bruny came out she said the surgery had gone well. Amelia's bowels had kind of rearranged themselves to block in her abscess so they were able to find and clean out the infection pretty easily, and they found and removed her appendix too. The only strange thing was that her appendix did not actually look perforated (aka burst). So they were not sure, if the appendix was in good shape, what would have caused the infection. But the doctor didn't seem concerned about it. I, however, immediately wondered if there was some sort of mystery disease Amelia could have that caused random weird infection in her body. But the doctor, again, didn't seem concerned. She said sometimes the appendix is perforated and you just can't see it, and sometimes you just never know what caused the problem.

I am going to fast forward here and say that we still really don't know what caused all this. Dr. Staetz told us that the germ that caused the abscess was a strep germ that usually abscesses in the brain, but the a surgeon told us it lived in the gut. (In any case it was not the same as the strep throat I was to get the following day.) The pathology report on Amelia's appendix showed that everything was consistent with appendicitis, although the pathologists did not see a perforation either. Picture a team of surgeons shrugging their shoulders here. Anyway, they fixed it.

So. Amelia was out of surgery and on morphine for pain and some other meds (an antibiotic, an anti-nausea drug, and maybe one more). The next day she mostly slept and was still very out of it. We were waiting and hoping for her to talk. But she still had this NG tube in (it goes from nose to belly and releases fluid and gas from the stomach), and she had to have these long braces on her arms so she wouldn't pull it out, so overall it was best that she was kind of in a morphine haze. The following day, Friday, I woke up feeling terrible, even for someone who had slept maybe 7 hours in the last 3 days. My throat was killing me and I thought I was going to collapse. The nurse checked my temperature and I had a fever, so Jim drove me home to rest for awhile. We got back to the hospital around 5 PM, and honestly I don't remember Amelia's state exactly. I know had already removed the NG tube and that we were waiting for her to start passing gas to relieve her swollen belly so they would not have to put the tube back in. I think sometime that day she started saying a few words and saying her animal sounds. Overall she was improving and already in much better shape.

Friday night was fairly peaceful for Amelia but horrible for me because of my sore throat. An angelic nurse gave me her own personal numbing cough drops, which go me through the night. First thing Saturday morning I drove to a nearby Urgent Care center and got a strep test, which was positive, so I got some penicillin. After I got that in my system, I started feeling better pretty quickly. However we were still worried about Amelia's distended belly. The doctors were saying that if she didn't start passing gas soon they would have to put back in the NG tube. Since Amelia was very aware of what was going on at this point, we all really wanted to avoid that. It would have made her totally miserable. She can't stand it when something is touching her face or stuck to her hands. She doesn't even like to wear a hat. So a tube taped to her face and itching her throat and nose would have been quite a trial. Plus putting the thing in is no picnic and having witnessed it once I was planning on being very vocal about not wanting the tube unless it was totally dire. Luckily, Amelia gradually got gassy. We were infinitely relieved.

Sunday was a day of waiting for poop. She was allowed to breastfeed again, and she was very happy about that. (I had requested a hospital pump and was pumping for maybe 5 minutes a night. I was too tired to do any more. Honestly I had come to terms with the idea that this might be the end of breastfeeding, but it all worked out okay.) Once Amelia had some milk, she started having more bowel sounds and finally some poop. Monday she ate some solid foods--Cheerios, rice and noodles Luli made and brought, some crackers. We had high hopes for going home on Tuesday. However, it was not to be. A blood test Tuesday morning showed that Amelia's white blood cell count was still slightly too high for the doctors' comfort. Dean and I were very frustrated because they told us that to go home, Amelia needed to be eating and pooping, and she was doing that. After several conversations with the surgeons we got the message that their decision might have more to do with medical liability than Amelia herself. Dean and I were frustrated because not only were we both tired of living in the hospital, we could tell that Amelia was just getting worn out. It was very hard for her to get much rest with nurses and doctors and who knows who else coming in and out of her room all the time. She looked exhausted and when we brought her back to our floor from a wagon ride, she would whimper when she saw where we were. And at lunch, when Amelia was sitting in my lap holding chicken finger in one hand and a cheese quesadilla in the other, it seemed plain silly to be in the hospital. But we made ourselves get over the frustration and tell ourselves that if out biggest problem with Amelia's doctors was that they were too careful, we were in good shape. (It turns out you can be frustrated and grateful at the same time. It was a spiritually interesting moment for me to realize that.)

Tuesday night was happy in that we had high hopes for getting out of the hospital the next day, and I even had hopes for a good night because the doctors had agreed that Amelia did not have to have her vitals checked while she was sleeping. Dean brought Thai food and the gratefulness in us had overcome the frustration. I have always tried to be grateful about Amelia's health, reminding myself when I am tired or frustrated how lucky I am to have a healthy baby. But I don't think I ever really appreciated it until we went through this. The truth is that what we went through, while obviously stressful, is nothing compared to what so many of the kids and parents in that hospital were and are going through. What was wrong with Amelia was not chronic and it is fixable. It is fixed. We are so grateful that she does not have cancer or a million other things that she just as easily could have. I still am thinking about those parents and kids many times a day, wishing them peace and strength. We are so, so lucky.

And I also want to thank everyone out there who sent us thoughts of healing and of love, who prayed for Amelia, who offered to help us with anything we needed, who called and texted and brought food and magazines and sent Amelia toys and crayons and balloons and cards. Each of those things really was so helpful. I knew I had good friends in Denver, but I didn't know how good they were until this! And we were especially lucky to have Dean's parents around. It will not go down as their best vacation ever, but their presence made it so much easier for Dean and me to get through the week. And even with so many of our friends and family members so far away, it was so helpful for me just to know how many people were thinking about Amelia, sending her support.

Wednesday morning, I woke up to a surgeon entering the room. He walked over to my air mattress and said, "Do you feel like going home today?"

Yes! And, although I was prepared to wait around most of the day for the discharge ball to get rolling, we ended up getting out of there pretty quickly because the hospital was totally full and they needed our room. Amelia got her last tube removed (note to surgeon: quietly singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" while removing a main line from a screaming child is more sinister than comforting) and we got our instructions and off we went.

So we have been home two nights now. Amelia is getting better and better. She was wary at first, kind of looking around wondering where we had been for so long. You can tell her incision hurts when she squats down and tries to stand back up, and she is definitely not as agile or quick as she was before the surgery, but she already moving more and seems to be in less pain. Also, she is still a little overly poopy from her antibiotics. However, I just talked to a nurse and she said the poop sounds like a normal side effect. So I think we are in good shape.

I am very glad to have told this story and put it behind us. Look for some Amelia pictures to be posted soon--live from Denver, now appendix-free.