Failure

Last Thursday night, as I was cleaning up the kitchen, Curt was chatting with me and holding Olivia.  (We have a hole in our kitchen from where the window used to be and it's fabulous!)  So, I was looking at her straight on and noticed that her left eye was a little cross-eyed.  She's been whiny for the last few days and I thought it was part of the cold that we'd all had.  We laughed about it and I told Curt that I would get her to the eye Dr. and get that checked.

The next morning she was a little more cranky and her eye was now WAY crossed.  SO I called to make the appt and headed out the door to DES to fix a mistake they'd made.  I was down there for 5 hours and by the time we left Olivia was hurting.  I'd never seen her cry this way.  It was because there was so much pressure in her head.

I'd picked up Curt at the lightrail station and told him that we need to get the hospital.  He didn't think anything was wrong because she smiled at him when he got in the car... then she started crying and cried the whole way to Cardon's.

Aaron stayed with me because he'd never been in the ER before and had wondered what it was like.  So, after a bit, we went to get Olivia a Head CT and she normally loves those... no sarcasm here!  She loves being bundled up and squished!  She cried and was so upset.  She really didn't like the extra squish.


The CT came back that the venticles in her brain were enlarged.  A quick call later and they said that she'd be admitted and have surgery in the morning.  She was going to have to wait the night and they'd do another CT at 4 am. before surgery at 7:30.  The Neurosurgeon, Dr. Elton (we love him!) came by at 9:30 to see her and to explain the exact procedure, he doesn't like talking to the parents just before surgery because most parents are a mess.  We had to wait for another hour before a room could be ready for us.

2 funny things happened before we went up to her room.

* I was sitting on the bed and saw someone walk by that looked like my brother, Rich.  He's a paramedic.   I told Aaron to go in the hallway and see if he could see the guy that I was talking about.  As he turned to look down a corridor, a voice said, "Hey Aaron."  Rich took care of his patient and then came in to find out what was happening with Olivia.  I'm glad we saw him.  My parents were out of town and to see someone from my family was comforting.

* on the way up to the room, I told Aaron to grab my bags and follow.  Olivia and I were on the bed and they were going to wheel us up.  Aaron didn't think this was fair, so the nurse told him to hop on in with me.  He had a blast.  He thought it was so cool to ride in the bed and especially up to the 7th floor in the elevator.  He wants to do it again.

Curt and Derek showed up around 11pm to give her a blessing and I felt so much comfort knowing that my daughter has Heavenly support.  I often feel as though she's being watched over!

So, when they did the CT scan in to morning, Olivia was still a little upset, butnot crying.  The same tech did her Post-op CT and she could tell Olivia was SO much happier.  She babbled and smiled through the whole post-op CT ride.

Surgery went really well and Dr. Elton came to visit us in her room to tellus the good news.  The catheter in her brain was clogged, and was replaced.  He changed the valve because it looked like that wasn't working very well either.  Curt thought it was funny that we sounded like we were talking about a car and replacing a fuel pump rather than our daughter and brain surgery!   We were there when she was waking up and as soon as the anesthesia wore off, the nurses could see the difference.  She started talking, smiling and laughing.  What a wonderful child!

She has a pretty cool scar, but it's also really gruesome looking.  I'll post pictures later of the crossed eye and her scar. She's back to her happy self and all the nurses were glad and sad to have us leave.  They kept saying how we're the easy patient, because if an alarm went off, I could tell if it was serious or not.  I would replace her leads if they came off and they didn't feel like glorified babysitters!

Aaron asked me once if he were in the hospital, would I stay the whole time with him the way that I stay with Olivia.  My answer?  "Only if you want me to."  He was very happy with this answer and told me that he loves me.  It's great to have an almost teenager tell me everyday that he loves me.  My kids all are that way and I tell them at least once a day how much I love them. 

I'm grateful that all of us were sick together, Olivia is well, and that I finally got medcation to fight off my sinus infection.  It's been an eventful 2 weeks, I'm glad that it was only 2 weeks and it wasn't drawn out over more than that!