The Day After

Man, was yesterday stressful! Alivia, Gran and I arrived at Nemours Children's Hospital for her CT scan only to be informed that we needed to go to Wolfson's Children's Hospital instead. Fortunately the two are only a couple blocks apart and are connected by a cross-interstate elevated walkway. It was much quicker to walk there than to try to move the car. We arrived pretty much on time and sat down to await our 10 a.m. appointment. At 10 they took us all back to start prepping Alivia and we hit another speed bump. The CT scan was ordered because of Alivia's small throat and jaw which meant she was high risk for airway issues which also meant they couldn't do the mild sedation they had intended and would need to do full anesthesia on her. Of course that meant they needed to find an anesthesiologist and none were available until possibly in the afternoon. So...

We left the hospital at 10:30 with orders to return at noon for a *possible* 1 p.m. procedure time. Livi, of course, still had to be kept NPO (no food or drink), poor thing, but handled it like a trooper. At 11:30 the hospital called us and told us that the earliest they could do the procedure would be 2:30 and that we needed to be back by 1:30. Gran and I decided to take Alivia home (we had gone to Toys R Us to pass the time) and let her get a short nap.

When we arrived back at the hospital we had to wait an hour before they were ready for Alivia, but, thankfully, they were able to find an anesthesiologist. She decided to try to do the procedure without putting her under, but Livi had had enough of cooperating and decided to get fussy, so they ended up knocking her out for the 5 minute procedure. Then, when Livi woke up, she REALLY decided she'd had enough and became rather intractable. By this time it was 4 in the afternoon and she was absolutely starving. My usually very quiet and sweet natured child threw a tantrum of major proportions to get some food and devoured a whole banana, a popsicle, a carton of milk, some apple juice and a handful of cheerios. The nurses were in a dither predicting that she would get sick, but she proved them all wrong.

The rest of the evening Livi remained very demanding and clingy, but this morning she was back to her normal self. Unfortunately we were not able to see the doctor yeterday so now we have to wait for an appointment to get the results and find out whether we will need to do the surgery. We have a tentative appointment for next Friday, but I'm hoping his assistant can squeeze us in sooner.

~ Jeana