elrod-tom
Moderator - Prefers "stereo weirdo" to "audiophile"
Well, we've just had one of those nights...
About a week ago, my 5 year old daughter had surgery on her eye. She has a "weak eye" that crosses, and after several years of patches the doctor decided that we needed to fix it surgically. It's painful and just generally unpleasant surgery, and she has not had a good week. However, she seemed to be improving daily, and all seemed like it was going along normally.
Yesterday, we took her in to see the doctor. She's had a lot more pain in the last day, and there were some things going on that were not "normal". Turns out that she's developed a post-operative infection. Since this is an eye, it's not something that they screw around with...they almost admitted her to the hospital right there on the spot. They ended up running several hours of tests, and giving us some strong antibiotics and better pain meds, and sending us home.
Well, what a night...we ended up paging our opthalmologist before it was all over, just to see if we ought to bring her back in. She was in a lot of pain...this is NOT a pleasant area of the body to have surgery on, that's for sure. He said that it wasn't unexpected, and to monitor her closely for signs of fever. In the mean time, she didn't sleep well...and by extension, neither did we.
At about 3:30 AM, she woke up again. Her pain meds had worn off, and she was very upset. I've got to believe that this stuff is pretty scary to a 5 year old too, so I'm sure that didn't help. Well, my poor wife has had NO sleep all night, and she was finally asleep...so I took my daughter downstairs in hope that she would settle down.
I put on some music, cuddled her up in a blanket, and just sat there and held her on the couch. She was sobbing from the pain, and I'm sure that she's a bit panicked by what's going on. The music (Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds), however, seemed to mellow her out a lot. I know it helped calm me down. Stuff like this is not fun for us parents...you always feel like you ought to be able to protect them from stuff like this. All I could do was hold her and rock her back and forth to the music. I guess there must be something to that, though...about 30 minutes later, she reached up and gave me a little kiss, and within seconds she finally conked out for the evening. Poor thing...
So I'm pretty wiped out right now, and on my way to work shortly. I'm hoping that all will be OK with this, and I'm pretty confident that it will be. Still, it's kind of scary not to have more control over a situation. I'm thankful that she has good doctors, and that my wife knows most of them well. Still, I have this feeling that years will go by and that I will still remember this evening like it happened yesterday.
About a week ago, my 5 year old daughter had surgery on her eye. She has a "weak eye" that crosses, and after several years of patches the doctor decided that we needed to fix it surgically. It's painful and just generally unpleasant surgery, and she has not had a good week. However, she seemed to be improving daily, and all seemed like it was going along normally.
Yesterday, we took her in to see the doctor. She's had a lot more pain in the last day, and there were some things going on that were not "normal". Turns out that she's developed a post-operative infection. Since this is an eye, it's not something that they screw around with...they almost admitted her to the hospital right there on the spot. They ended up running several hours of tests, and giving us some strong antibiotics and better pain meds, and sending us home.
Well, what a night...we ended up paging our opthalmologist before it was all over, just to see if we ought to bring her back in. She was in a lot of pain...this is NOT a pleasant area of the body to have surgery on, that's for sure. He said that it wasn't unexpected, and to monitor her closely for signs of fever. In the mean time, she didn't sleep well...and by extension, neither did we.
At about 3:30 AM, she woke up again. Her pain meds had worn off, and she was very upset. I've got to believe that this stuff is pretty scary to a 5 year old too, so I'm sure that didn't help. Well, my poor wife has had NO sleep all night, and she was finally asleep...so I took my daughter downstairs in hope that she would settle down.
I put on some music, cuddled her up in a blanket, and just sat there and held her on the couch. She was sobbing from the pain, and I'm sure that she's a bit panicked by what's going on. The music (Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds), however, seemed to mellow her out a lot. I know it helped calm me down. Stuff like this is not fun for us parents...you always feel like you ought to be able to protect them from stuff like this. All I could do was hold her and rock her back and forth to the music. I guess there must be something to that, though...about 30 minutes later, she reached up and gave me a little kiss, and within seconds she finally conked out for the evening. Poor thing...
So I'm pretty wiped out right now, and on my way to work shortly. I'm hoping that all will be OK with this, and I'm pretty confident that it will be. Still, it's kind of scary not to have more control over a situation. I'm thankful that she has good doctors, and that my wife knows most of them well. Still, I have this feeling that years will go by and that I will still remember this evening like it happened yesterday.
