Alexa's home and doing better

The first night in the hospital was rough. The caudal (it's kind of like an epidural) that they had given her before surgery started wearing off around 10:30 Thursday night and she was screaming with pain. After several doses of morphine, and also toradol we finally got her to calm down and go to sleep. It was like that off an on all night though. She would wake up in pain and it would take several doses of pain medication to get her calmed down. At some point they also added valium to her medications. The next morning she was nauseous and vomiting, so they were giving her zofran to help with that and she was also getting ditropan for bladder spasms.

We got her out of bed Friday, but she wasn't happy about it and only wanted to ride in the wagon and did not want to try to walk or play in the play room. Saturday we made her walk more and take more wagon rides. By Saturday evening she had walked the halls a handful of times, finally played in the play room a little, and was getting a little more confident. Sunday she was starting to act more like herself and was definitely ready to come home.

Alexa got to come home from the hospital on Sunday morning. They ended up keeping her an extra day because Saturday she was vomiting and still needed her morphine and valium quite a bit. They did blood work to check her kidney function to be sure there wasn't inflammation or something like that causing her more discomfort and the nausea. The blood work came back fine, and the nausea subsided, so they released her for home on Sunday.

She's doing much better each day and seems to only be in pain in the late afternoon/early evening so that's the only time we are giving her pain medicine. She will only take the pain medicine if she's hurting a lot because she REALLY doesn't like the taste of it!

Unfortunately as a result of the surgery (and mostly because of the bladder spasms) we've had to take a step backwards and she is wearing diapers/pull ups again. She is not happy about this and is self conscious/embarrassed about it. I tried to explain to her that this isn't her fault and that her surgery is causing it, but she's still not comfortable with it. The doctors said that this was completely normal and that she shouldn't need them any more after a few weeks.

It was cute to see how much the girls missed each other during Alexa's hospital stay. While Alexa was in the hospital, family would call and check on her and ask to talk to her but at first she didn't feel like talking. When she finally felt like talking the first people she asked to talk to were her sisters...it was sweet to watch her tell them that she missed them and to hear them tell her that they hope she feels better and that they miss her. When we realized that they weren't going to let her come home on Saturday, I had Scott bring Emily and Madison up to the hospital to see her. She was very glad to see them, but the visit tired her out pretty quickly. She fell asleep, so daddy took Emily and Madison back home. When Alexa woke up she didn't remember telling daddy and her sisters goodbye and she was in a panic that they weren't there, so there was another cute phone call home to Emily and Madison.

Now that she is home and feeling a little better, things aren't as cute as they were in the hospital...the girls are back to arguing and fighting and aggravating each other. Home sweet home!