Well Carissa’s surgery went well today. We got to Rainbow Babies about 7:55 after fighting traffic on 77 who were all gawking at this car in the median. There wasn’t even anyone in it. Hopefully this will be the last surgery this family has to see for a while. Carissa was fortunate that they were able to do the entire operation through the ear canal. Otherwise they would have had to cut a flap behind her ear and go in that way. That would have doubled the time she was in surgery. She was very brave and did quite well up until the point that they needed to take the IV out. Yes I said out. She freaked out because they were going to take it out. I’m sure a big part of that was that she was still a little dopey. She colored her doctor some pictures. The first thing she said when she woke up in the recovery room was “where are the pictures?”
The goofiest part of the day was in the area where they prep her for surgery. They have a lady in there who must be some sort of child psychologist or something. Apparently her job is to go around and make sure the kids know exactly what is going to happen and has certain things done in certain ways. I don’t think that her ways are necessarily wrong, but i’m not sure they were necessary. For instance she wanted Carissa to try breathing through her mask, and April was helping her hold it up. The lady got kind of cranky about April helping her saying Carissa should do it her self. I got the distinct impression from the doctors and nurses that they didn’t really enjoy having this lady around. My gut feeling is some higher up someplace decided that they needed her in there and that was that.
When it was time to leave they told me to get the van and pick them up at the main entrance. Well it took them longer to get there because of Carissa’s little IV removal performance, so I pulled in and stopped. Some guy comes out and yells at me for stopping there. It brought back vivid memories of Aultman’s Valet service. It must be a hospital parking thing (i.e. you have to be an asshole to work in hospital parking). I mean no one told me I couldn’t stop there and I was just trying to pick up my daughter, but he obviously didn’t want to tell me in a nice way that I couldn’t stop there. Anyhoo I had to drive around in circles for about ten minutes until they finally came down.
In April news, she is feeling slightly better. Her fever is gone, but she still has her head all stuffed up and what not. At least she was able to go today, but I don’t think it was very enjoyable for her.
We saw the “the mask lady” at Akron Children’s while waiting for Ellie’s surgery. The same gimmick to every child old enough to hear it. After several hours, I could have taught the kids on what to expect.
So I hate that lady! I think she is quite lucky I did not bite her head off considering how I was feeling that day!