Monday 16 February 2015

Hernia Last Week, Gone Already

Lara had her hernia repair operation on Wednesday, 11th February. She had to stop eating by midnight the day before, so we treated her to whatever she wanted for her tea on Tuesday, which was a bacon double cheeseburger meal from Burger King. She's pretty much grown out of eating kids meals now, although she likes the whole idea of a Happy Meal in McDonalds, so she usually ends up having a McFlurry dessert to fill her up.
We had to get her to the hospital by 12.20pm on Wednesday, she wasn't nervous at all, in fact she enjoyed looking at the photos on the hospital website about what would happen while she was there.
The staff were very good at making her feel comfortable, but there wasn't much they could do about the waiting around. At first we were warned it might be at least two hours before she would go in for surgery, but it turned out to be 4 hours before she was taken into the holding area, and another 40 minutes there before they took her in for surgery. She'd not eaten all day, and nor had Olga, out of sympathy, (I'd only sneaked a mars bar).

  

As soon as they took Lara I had to dash off to collect Dan from nursery and bring him back to the hospital. I arrived just before nursery closed, and Dan was a bit teary and being cuddled by one of the staff in a play area. He'd been horsing around with three or four of his mates and he'd tripped over, and his friends all landed on top of him. The staff member thought he might have hurt his shoulder, but when I grilled him about where his owie was, he pointed at his neck. He didn't like being picked up, but other than that he seemed ok. He was happy enough when I took him to McDonalds for a quick tea - I had to eat something before I faded away from lack of food all day!

We returned to the hospital just as Lara had been given the all clear to go home. She looked tired, but was generally in good spirits, and she was delighted to see Dan. She was brave when the nurse took the IV out, I was expecting some tears from that, but she was great. She admitted later that she had been a bit teary when she first came round from the anesthetic, and had asked for Olga to come and see her, and she'd been in enough pain for the nurses to give her some morphine, but she perked up once they gave her some popsicles (ice lollies) to eat.
The icing on the cake was that she was allowed to leave the hospital in a wheelchair, she'd been looking forward to that part almost as much as the popsicles or the bubblegum-flavoured gas they'd given her to disguise the smell of the anesthetic gas.



We'd been warned that she might feel a bit sick on the way home, but she was fine. It was 8.30pm when we got home, and she had some bread to eat and when she was ready I carried her up to bed.
She's to have 2 weeks of rest from all sports, but a few days on now, and it's hard to keep her from running around, to look at her you wouldn't know she'd had an operation a few days ago.





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