Hell

May 16 – 18 (Days 2-4)

The night before wasn’t all roses, I assure you. Periodically, I was awakened by the sound of one of M’s monitor’s blaring in my ear. At other times, M’s leg was hurting so bad I’d have to go get the nurse to ‘top off’ the IV meds. Poor thing!

I received a call from my b-oss on Friday morning. She left me a lovely message saying that I needed to keep in contact with her about what was going on because she had no help for Friday or Monday. It wouldn’t have been a really terrible message, except for the fact that she sounded so bitchy and didn’t say anything like, “What a terrible thing to happen! I hope M is going to be okay. Please let me know how you guys are doing.” Would it have been that hard? I was so pissed about her attitude that I didn’t call her back until we were back at home.

We met with the surgeon’s PA (physician’s assistant) in the morning, and he said that M’s surgery would be sometime that day. No sure when, but it would happen. After waiting ALL DAY, her surgery began at about 7 pm. [I should mention that she was able to have a popsicle the night before and then some solid food and liquid in the early afternoon on the day of surgery. The poor thing was SO hungry!] The surgeon placed a plate with six pins (screws?), which will be removed in a year. Everything went well, and she headed to the recovery room around 9 pm.

D.P. asked earlier in the day if could come to the hospital in the afternoon. He was there for me and M from right around 430 pm until she went to recovery after her surgery. And he HATES hospitals. With a passion. He told me he usually becomes physically ill being in one. Regardless of his fear, he was at the hospital for FIVE HOURS… he was there more than anyone else, including M’s own father. I can’t even begin to describe how awesome he is, or how I will never be able to thank him enough.

We talked for two hours later that evening, when he was at home and M was out of recovery and back to her room. It was one of those talks that I had PLANNED on getting into that night, I just didn’t plan on doing it from a hospital room on the telephone.

The rest of M’s stay was less than interesting, except for the bit where she pretended she was the girl from Poltergeist and spit her pain med everywhere. The nurse and I tried everything – putting it in a ‘shot’ of chocolate syrup (not acceptable to M), putting the chocolate syrup on top of vanilla ice cream (still not acceptable) and then finally the nurse said she would put it on the spoon first before she scooped the ice cream, thus hiding the medicine… if M didn’t take it then, she was giving up. It took awhile, but M took the medicine… with a fight, of course. Later, I wrote a letter to the nurse, thanking her for being there more than anyone else. She was AWESOME.

Friends and family came by to visit, some bearing gifts but all bearing love.

M was released on May 18th. She must be in a wheelchair with no use of her leg (four weeks from the surgery date), and then she will use a ‘granny’ walker for the next four weeks. Anyone who has parented a four-year-old knows this is not going to be an easy time for our family. M has already tried to use her leg several times, and I’m not afraid to tattle-tell on her at the doctor’s office. LOL

And to think… we always thought it was going to be E that broke his bones.