The surgery appears to have been quite the success. Nothing comes out of her nose anymore, except snot. No milk. No scrambled eggs. It's weird. She's back on solid, but soft, foods. She is WALKING. Which she began to do the night before her surgery, and which now she prefers to do at all times. We have practically given up on the high chair. She's back in day care and we're hoping they can help whip her back into shape. Not literally.

As I mentioned on facebook at the time, her surgeon is hopeful that she won't need another palate surgery for awhile. She also got a new set of ear tubes. I hadn't really mentioned much about this anywhere because it was getting gross and stressful, but in the months leading up to her surgery, the right ear tube was failing. Nonstop ear infections. Disgusting, pussy discharge. I'm pretty sure she could barely hear out of that ear. We got all the gunk suctioned out by the ENT two or three times. Shierry was on antibiotic drops for as long as the pediatrician could stand it, but the doctor was worried about instigating a fungal rebellion in there. Do not google ear fungus. I did...I did...Oh god...I did. Anyhoo, tubes replaced, everything working so far.

Shierry is at this weird age where she sort of understands what is going on, DEFINITELY has opinions about everything, and has limited capacity for reason. So, she knew everyone around her was causing her pain and discomfort, she did NOT like it, we had no way to properly convey to her that it was temporary and ultimately good for her. She was just a little baby during the other recoveries. She zonked out on pain meds for a couple days and then went back to normal. Not this time.

In the post-op recovery room, she didn't want to wake up. She just stayed perfectly still and moaned with her eyes closed. When we got to her room in the Intermediary Care Unit (hooked up to monitors, stat checks every two hours), she woke up. Thrashing around her crib-cage-bed in rage and pain. She pulled off her little monitor electrode things and almost pulled out her IV. She didn't want to be touched. I was shaken and horrified. She basically refused to take breaths. We pushed the morphine pump button as often as we could, but nothing was improving. The nurse told us that they needed to put her on oxygen and that we should leave the room while they did it. So we walked down the hall and huddled in a corner and cried. We could hear her screams. I had visions of them having to put restraints on her to keep her from hurting herself.

When we got back to the room, she was a bit calmer but still didn't want affection and refused to drink anything. The nurses doubled her morphine dosage and we were still pushing the button for more every 15 minutes. We finally all went to sleep. I mean sort of. We were all up every hour or so, every time the CA or nurse came in. Or when any of the many, many monitors sounded.

The next day, she woke up and took some apple juice. We thought, hallelujah, there's our girl, hopefully we can get out of here in a few hours. But that bit of apple juice was it. She wouldn't drink anything else for the rest of the day. She was so miserable, a therapy dog came in to visit her and Shierry, who, in normal life, thinks that she herself is a dog, started screaming after about 30 seconds of poor Floyd. We were in for another night, but at least we got to go to the main floor. Where it turns out, you're allowed to refuse the over night stat checks. WHAT. How did I never know about that before.

We are at Dell so often that the nurses have started to remember her, and we have begun to have the same nurses across multiple visits. Her main floor nurse, bless her heart, is awesome in some ways. She figured out a way to let us feed Shierry from a spoon even though we'd been told that was verboten. She could not give two shits about when stat checks happen. But she is also sort of hilariously lazy. Her casual attitude extends to things like...misplacing eye ointment, which requires a two-hour pharmacy delay, and not sending us home with our Hycet prescription. But, whatever, I'll add that to my list of duties for next time. Bring blankets and pillows from home. Hound M for medication whereabouts.

The next morning we woke up, and things still seemed dire. Shierry was in a decent mood but still refused all sustenance. They would not let us go home until she took in an ounce an hour. She could only have liquids, and she wanted real food. We were despairing a bit. My visions this time involved gtubes. I didn't see how it was ever going to get better. And then, miraculously, her grandparents got her to drink most of a smoothie. Somehow this was enough to convince the PA to let us go home. I admit, when the PA asked me if I thought we could make it at home, I sort of lied. I had very, very little confidence that we would be able to get her to drink even the paltry required minimum amount. But I knew that we all needed to get the hell out of the hospital to even have a shot.

She didn't drink anything that night at home. And she barely drank anything for the next few days. I called the surgeon's office in an absolute panic. If something didn't change, we'd probably be back in the hospital the next day because of dehydration. The nurse asked me if I had tried this or that or this or that. And I sobbed into the phone, yesssssssss, and it issssssssn't woooooooooorking. She, thank god, did not react to my histrionics or tell me to calm down. She instead suggested we up the painkiller dose a bit and make sure to give it to her every four hours on the dot. Dan and I had thought she wasn't in much pain, she seemed to be OK until she would sign "eat" and we presented her with a lousy cup instead of cheese. Well, wouldn't you know, the nurse was right. It worked. She started to show interest in those baby, or old people, depending on the marketing campaign, protein shakes, and she lived off those for the next week and a half.

I was elated that she was herself again. But pretty devastated that we misread her cues so badly. We could have been giving her those pain meds more regularly. We thought she was just pissed off; we didn't think she was in that much pain. Plus, we had some sort of weird fear of giving her that much Hycet. We'd never had to before, and I guess we thought...she'd become a baby opiate addict? I don't know. Oh well. She forgave us/didn't really understand the exact details of what was happening.

On to the next one.