We are home from the hospital and Abby is doing well after her surgery today. She's a little groggy and not too happy about the bandage on her hand where the IV was, but she's eating and resting on the couch with Jenna watching Barbie, the Magic Pegasus. We'll know she's back to feeling 100% when we catch her scaling the bathroom counter again:)
Before I give you the details of our day, I just have to say that I absolutely love our health insurance. We have Kaiser Permanente, which is an HMO, and it is the best healthcare we've ever received. Guess how much we paid for Abby's surgery today? $5. Yes, $5. That's it. In addition to the low costs for us, they have excellent doctors. In fact, doctors compete to be on staff with them. Kaiser is awesome and our church selected a great plan that is top notch--so yay to both of them. And for those of you wondering why our LCMS church isn't with the Concordia Health Plans, it's because they are way more expensive for the church and for us. I know most LCMS churches wouldn't even dare go someplace other than Concordia for their health plan, but our church does their own thing sometimes and we are grateful that they did.
So I got all the information in the mail regarding Abby's surgery earlier this week. On the sheet, it said that Abby had to stop eating at midnight the night before, but could have clear liquids (which includes Jello, juice, water, popsicles, etc.) until 7:30am. They wanted a 3 hour time frame of no eating at all before her surgery at 10:30am. Then yesterday, I got a phone call from some nurse telling me that she couldn't have anything--no clear liquids at all after midnight. I freaked out a little bit, because I couldn't imagine not feeding Abby something in the morning. She demands gogo (yogurt) the second she wakes up every morning. So, I called the pediatric surgeon's office who sent me the paper saying I could give her clear liquids before 7:30. She said, absolutely yes. She can have a cup of Jello before 7:30.
So, I gave Abby Jello and a little bit of water at about 7:15am. When we got to the hospital, our doctor was ahead of schedule and wanted to take Abby in early, but coudln't because it hadn't been three hours since she had her Jello and water. The doctor and the nurses treated me like I had done something wrong by giving her the Jello and water before 7:30. I kept telling them that the sheet they sent me said I could and that I even called the nurse to make sure. Our doctor was visibly annoyed that I gave Abby Jello this morning and the nurses left the room talking about how awful it was that I did that. So, I felt like the worst mom ever, even though I was told twice it was okay to give her Jello before 7:30.
We had to wait an hour and a half for them to do surgery on another baby while Abby's Jello digested. They brought in this sedative medicine that made Abby act like a drunk little baby. It was so funny! She was talking slowly and slurring her words. Her eyes were rolling in her head and she was giggling at nothing. Pretty funny.
After Abby came out of surgery, the doctor apologized to me about the way she and her staff had acted earlier and said that they needed to all be on the same page about food before surgery. So, I gave her the sheet that was my proof for Abby to eat Jello before 7:30. Needless to say, I felt better about the whole thing after I realized that I hadn't done anything wrong. It was a communication problem between the pediatric surgery department and the anesthesia department.
So, we are thankful for a successful surgery and that it wasn't wasn't a terribly serious health issue. The nurse told me that our doctor was performing 7 surgeries today, all on children under 3. As I saw them coming in an out of the waiting room, I wondered what their condition was. Their parents had scared looks on their faces, much like mine, and I prayed for each of them as they went in. Abby just had a little cyst that had to be removed, but I'm sure that some of those kids had surgeries that were more complicated and scary than hers. We have a lot to be thankful for.
Thank you for all of your prayers today!
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