post surgery week

We walked into the hospital at 7:30am and Flor ran into the arms of her abuelo! She loves him so much!! She played with Stephanie for an hour and then they called us back. Once back in pre-op, she began to get a little nervous and started crying for her abuelo. The sweet nurse said that he could come back and so she sat in his lap and cried her little heart out. She kept telling me, "I'm trying to stop, moma." Bless her heart. I told her it was ok to cry sometimes and she just cried on my shoulder. Then God sent an angel named Atasha to come visit her. She brought in a puzzle and colors for Flor. She knew just what to say to her and made her feel better almost instantly. When it was time for us to say goodbye, we walked as far as we could and got our hugs and kisses. She walked back with Atasha like a little princess, even holding the corner of her gown up so it wouldn't drag the floor. That was 9:00am.

I heard from the nurse at 9:40am saying that Dr. Grant had just started surgery and that Flor had done great. They updated me every hour until Dr. Grant finally came out about 12:15pm. He said she had made him work harder than he expected, meaning there was lots of scar tissue to work through and he also found a hole behind the hard pallet that he got my permission to fix while she was already under. Daddy and I got to go back into recovery by 1 as we waited for a private room. She was knocked out the entire time.

When she did finally wake up, I got my kisses and she asked for Chris, who was on his way up with Jami and Stephanie. She did not complain of any pain whatsoever, she didn't even flinch when she noticed the "straw" in her hand. She slept on and off for most of the afternoon. Daddy, Jami, and Stephanie left before 3 to try and get home before the roads got bad since it was sleeting in Huntsville. Chris stayed with us in the hospital, but left by 5am to get to work by 9. That was nice since I was able to go to the cafeteria to eat and take a little break.

Flor ate a little dinner, but lost it all only an hour or so later. Zofran took care of the nausea after that. She was up and down all night going to the bathroom, or trying to at least. We didn't sleep much and waiting anxiously all morning for word on when we could go home. But the morning came and went. Flor got upset several times because she just wanted to go home. After barely eating her lunch, she napped for about 1 1/2 hours... no, I didn't eat all day! Finally, about 2:30pm, the nurse came in and told us we could go!

The drive home was uneventful besides a little nausea at first. She slept from Gardendale until we exited off of I-565 and we were welcomed by her aunts, Connie and Stephanie and their families. You wouldn't have guessed she had just had surgery because she was almost bouncing off the walls! But as soon as they left she became whiney and crashed! We slept for almost 11 hours that night!

Since the surgery, Flor has been doing extremely well compared to what I was expecting. She's still been very whiney and sensitive about everything, crying more than usual, and has a few minor personaloty changes, but I'm expecting that to get back to normal when she starts feeling better. She has only a few minor complaints a day about her mouth bothering her and she's having some trouble with constipation, but we're working through that.

All in all she is doing extremely well. Thank you all so much for your prayers!!