I'm sure you're asking, "what is this header?" But I felt like making this subject header rather fancy. First I want to start off by saying thank you so much to all that reached out to us to ease our minds before, during, and after Lola's surgery. She did AWESOME, and I'm so glad we did it and it's over. I wanted to wait to write this post until we had taken her for her follow up and to see if the surgery had actually worked.
So we had to be there at 6:30am, and we live about 40 minutes from the hospital we were having it done at. So I tried to just scoop her up in her pajamas and put her in the car, but she woke up while in the garage like "why the heck are we in the garage?" And she was up.
Prepping her for surgery was so much easier than I thought. We were the first surgery scheduled, and she didn't need an IV, so they had their Child Life Services Department come over to her room and just let her play with tons of toys and bubbles until they were ready. It was great. They let one of us go back with her in the blue scrub space suit, and I probably should've sent Chuck, because of course I cried watching her be put to sleep, but seriously I was a nervous wreck. She didn't even cry one tear the entire time she was being wheeled to the OR, and switching beds, and laying down, and them putting the sticky monitors on her and everything. They put the mask on her, and she barely even got one single cry out before she was asleep. They walked me out, and the doctor said he would be coming to get us within 15 minutes.
Twenty five minutes goes by, and Chuck can tell I'm about to flip out. I get really really quiet when I'm seriously nervous. Like I shut down and can't talk to anybody, and don't want anyone talking to me. He has only witnessed this once, while they were prepping me for my c-section. So he could tell I was terrified. The TV screen still had said she was "in procedure" so I was starting to cry at this point, thinking "he said 15 minutes!"
And then the doctor came out as soon as I started to cry and walked us back to recovery. Lola was definitely upset, and a little dismantled from the anesthesia, but with a little water and about 15 minutes, she was almost completely back to normal. We left the hospital about 45 minutes later and she was completely back to normal by then!
So we had our follow up last night and the ENT said he had never seen her ears look so great. And I will tell you that we immediately noticed a difference in her. She has always been a very happy/playful girl, even suffering through all of those ear infections, and by Saturday morning she was a complete maniac. She is SO busy now, and laughs hysterically all the time. I honestly don't think she has cried a single tear since then. I still can't believe it.
So if you're on the fence about getting tubes in your babies ears, or they're struggling with infection but not to the tube part yet, I say just do it. It has been incredible already.
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