The Road to Recovery

I honestly and sincerely believed that Kaitlyn's recovery would be relatively easy.  I believed that she would have the surgery day where she would be out of it, the next two days would be mostly resting and eating soft food and then she would bounce back.  She usually bounces back from everything so fast.

Yesterday, she did so much better.  I smooshed up some chewable tylenol, mixed it in a few bites of applesauce and tricked her into taking it.  For lunch she had half a small icee, 3 chicken crowns and a little bit of mac and cheese.  Later in the afternoon, around "dinner" time, she had a few bites of rice and before bed she had 2 bites of chocolate ice cream when Auntie Christy, Uncle Dennis and Camaryn came to visit.  She put up some fuss with her nightly round of antibiotics, but wasn't too bad about it.  Before bed, she came out so excited "Mommy, guess what!  I have to poop!!"  She was SOO excited.  And she did go.    She also peed for the second time that day.  Considering this was the first day she's peed more than once a day, it was a huge deal to us.  It was progress.

Kaitlyn's school called yesterday.  She was unable to make it to the first day so they wanted to be sure we planned on her attending.  I explained, again, the situation and how we'd like to do Independent Study for next week as the principal had suggested.  She said she couldn't, since she missed the first day and the teacher wouldn't have enough time to prepare it.  GRRRRR.  She said we could try and have her start school on Monday, since another student was after having her tonsils removed the Friday before Kaitlyn.  I resisted the temptation to lay into her and tell her our asthmatic daughter was having trouble eating enough food in a day to sustain a young toddler, there was no way she was ready.  And the last thing I wanted to do was send a kid who was in pain, hungry but unable/unwilling to eat, scared because of the pain little girl to school for nearly 6 hours a day where she can't have juice with her to sip on and gets one chance to eat.  Instead, I told her I would love for that possibility to be a reality and we'd keep them updated.

By the evening, Kaitlyn was in a great mood.  A bit sensitive, but wanting to play and run and be up and about.  At 10:00 she asked if she could sleep with me.  I told her she could, but only until Daddy got home from the ballgame in San Francisco, then she would have to go into her bed.  At 1:15, she woke up crying.  Daddy got home 15 minutes later.

The ear pain set in.  We were warned that it could happen, but I thought it would be around the same as all the other pain.  I never would have thought that it would pop up in the middle of the night 4 days after operation day.  Nothing would stop the pain.  It hurt her to sit up, to lay down, to swallow, to drink, to chew, to do anything.  So, she wouldn't swallow.  Her spit was so thick that it just wouldn't go down.  Finally at about 2:30 she decided to try to go back to sleep.  She was up every 30 minutes crying.  In pain.  Miserable.  By 5, I had completely regretted having them removed.  I think her on prednisone was easier to deal with and easier on her.  Finally, she fell asleep at 7:15 and stayed asleep for 2 hours before she gave up on her bed.

This morning we made some blueberry muffins together.  She's trying to eat one now.  Hopefully, she'll keep eating and drinking and eventually we'll get passed this all and she'll start feeling more and more normal.  I really, really cannot wait for that.