Sophia’s First Surgery – Ear Tubes
In brief, Sophia had tubes put in both ears this morning and is doing great. (napping at the moment, in fact. 
)
Michele and Sophia waiting for the Surgeon
Guess it was bound to happen. Many of you know Sophia has had a running bout with ear infections. She’s had around 8 or 9 in the last year. Having to give her antibiotics all the time can’t be that great. In addition, her inability to sleep through the night wasn’t helping. So, on the advice of her pediatrician and the ENT specialist, Sophia had tubes put in her ear this morning at WakeMed North.
We arrived at hospital at 6:15 for her 7:45 surgery. That meant getting her out of the crib at 5:45 am. Ironically, she decided to sleep through the entire night last night. Can’t say the same was true for Mommy Michele who was anxious and had trouble sleeping. Go Figure.
The nursing staff at WakeMed was fantastic. They were kind, patient, and interacted fantastically with Sophia. Sophia endeared herself to them by successfully being “that really cute kid.” After the 19 month old in the bed next to her was wheeled out on “the train”, Sophia spent the next 30 minutes asking, “Baby, are you?” (The “where” in the statement is, of course, understood. At least by her parents.) The nursing staff was kind enough to let us walk around the PACU so that she was sedentary the whole time. Acknowledging our bias right up front, I think other patients and their families were enjoying Sophia and her antics. They chuckled and smiled as Sophia said hello to the clock; asked “Baby, are you?”; and instructed Daddy to stand on one scale while she stood on the other.
Sophia getting some love during pre-op
Mommy and Daddy continued to work up the story that her bed was a train and that the doors to the OR were “outside”. This made her very interested in sitting on the bed and going through those doors. That’s a really good thing since our surgeon ended up being 20 minutes late. In effect, Sophia had been awake almost 2 1/2 hours without anything in her stomach.
She was still in an awesome mood. You can see that in the pictures. Our huge fear was that the other kids would start returning from their surgeries before Sophia left. Other kids crying probably would not help sustain her positive outlook. Luckily, we were able to let her ride her “choo-choo” “outside” before anyone else got back. As nerve-wracking as it was to see her going down that hallway on the bed with the nurses, we were so proud of her for just sitting on the bed and looking forward. (Did I mention she was awesome?)
We were in the waiting room for around 15-20 minutes before the surgeon came out to tell us everything was great. Surgery went great. She had no fluid in her ears. (Probably because she’s wrapping up this round of antibiotics.) She was very well behaved.
That last part changed after we went to recovery. Once the anesthesia wore off, she was very disoriented and confused. (We were not to her yet when she came to, but we heard her.) It took about 2o minutes of the world’s best medicine – cuddling, singing, and soothing from mommy – for Sophia to relax and be ready to go.