Surgery complete. Now time to get better.

Yesterday morning Andy work me up with a phone call at 5:45 am saying that Nora's surgery was going to be at 7 am. Ugh. It is a 45 minute drive from our house to the hospital. The nurse got on the phone and said that she would tell them it had to be at 8 since I was not there and it wasn't a good time for her anyway (I bet - shift change is at 7). So, I took a quick shower and managed to get here at 7 am anyway.

15 minutes after I got here they said it was going to be at 11 am. So, we sat and Nora slept pretty much until the surgery. Overall it went good. The Dr took some fluid from her brain, tested it, and the test came back negative for bacteria. They will do a 2 day culture as well which will come back tomorrow. She is all sewed up now with nothing hanging out of her head. Well - except for her IV.

She was generally good yesterday since she had no vomiting - except for coming out of anesthesia. Although she also had no food really, so I am not sure if that is why we had not vomiting or what. Also, there were no "spells." However, she was extremely irritable when awake and drugs didn't seem to help too much which is quite frustrating.

The latest is the nurse just came in and said they want to up her calorie content in her formula and put in a feeding tube. This does not make much sense to me since she is eating fine - it is keeping it down that is a problem. The nurse said that it didn't look like she ate much yesterday. Duh, we had to keep her from eating before the surgery - which we thought was at 7, then 8, then 11 - then after the surgery she was nauseous so we only gave her pedialyte. It is not because she won't eat! So, I haven't discussed it with the doctor yet, but I am going to make them give her a chance to eat the formula by mouth before we give her the tube.

I am reminded of the NICU days in that I am now getting pulled into the drama of the Bronson workplace and getting annoyed with things. Yesterday, the PICU nurse called down to the OR nurse and asked if they could put in a new IV during her surgery. Her old one was getting a little sore and it is quite an ordeal to get one started and much less traumatic for her to do when sedated. When we got down to the pre-op, the transport nurse told the anesthesiologist that the PICU wanted a new IV. He said "Do they want us to clip her nails too?" Ohhh, I knew that wasn't going to end well. Of course, word got out and all the nurses up here have been fuming about it. Plus, the IV that they put in during surgery was no good anyway. They put it in a difficult spot on her left wrist and it was clotted off by the time she got back to the room. This morning Nora got a new IV in her head. Sounds gross, but it is actually better because then her arms and legs are free.

There is also a battle of equipment. When Nora gets moved from her room, to CT, to OR, etc they take along a monitor and cords and stuff. They are very protective of their equipment and there is always a debate over where it goes when she gets back to her room. I don't know why they don't just label the stuff.

Oh well, I hope things start improving so I have the luxury of spending more energy worrying about this petty crap.