Miss Maelee's Big Owie

I cannot believe it's been a month already since Maelee's surgery.  Between that, photog picking up and fun projects on the house, it's been a busy month!  But I finally have a few moments to catch you all up on the why-fore's concerning the whole thinggy...

About a year ago Maelee had her first UTI {urinary tract infection}, and about 2 months later she had another one.  About 2 months later, another one.  Again a month later.  Again a month after that.  2 weeks later she had yet another one and 3 days after she was off the antibiotic for THAT UTI, another one sprung up in it's place.  Her fevers were getting up to 107.5* which is definitely enough to freak a Mommy and Daddy out!!!  Somewhere around the 3rd UTI we were sent to a specialist, had an ultrasound and finally in the middle of her 7th UTI she had a VERY painful VCUG {not entirely sure what that stands for but basically it involves a catheter, an X-Ray and trying to convince a 3 year old that it's ok to pee on a table so they can get the right X-Ray image.  Yeah, that one was fun!!!}

Anyway, we found out that poor miss Maelee had stage 4 reflux which is seriously no bueno.  Reflux is when the valves on the lower end of your ureters - or the tubes connecting the kidneys to your bladder - don't work right and let the pee go back up toward the kidneys {and your dear little kidneys can't handle even a tiny bit of bacteria... urine is FULL of it!}.  There are 5 stages, 1 being low and 5... you get it.  :O)  So to hear she had stage 4 was scary.  Basically every time she tried to pee, most of her urine went right back into her kidneys, hence the insane UTI's.  Then it would drain back down, making her pee again and start the cycle over.  And over.  Yeeeeah.  Poor girl.  It sucked to say the least my friends.  Luckily, we had a feeling going into that dr visit that she was more than likely going to need surgery so we weren't surprised when the specialist said that was the only option to get her better.

Maelee was so freaked out by that whole appointment that she kept telling us, "I don't ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER want to go to the doctor again!"  Oh, if she only knew what she was in for... we told her that Kiki, her birth mom, was going to come see her in the hospital and she got all excited for that... So we "forgot" to remind her that the hospital was full of doctors and that one in particular was going to, well, you know... cut her open.  Who are we to not let her focus on the positive?  Ha ha {I say that dryly, FYI}.

So the big day came and she was pretty excited for all the nifty things in the hospital.  They gave her a turtle, a coloring book and some crayons and once we were in the prep room she got to play in a power wheels race car.  She thought this place was pretty neat, that is of course until she realized that she wasn't going home anytime soon.  Then the minor freakouts started.  Luckily, hospitals have some lovely drugs to take the edge off.  When that kicked in, she got LOOPY!!  Pulling faces at all the nurses, pretending to take pictures of Clint with a camera that was evidently only as big as her eye... it was pretty funny.  We had our Kindle Fire for her to play on and so after seeing that, the anesthesiologist gave her his smart phone to play a game on while they wheeled her back into the OR.  She didn't even realize we weren't there, which was a relief in a way and a bit sad too.  I was sad at least!! 

Gee whiz did those 3 hours draaaaaaaaag oooooooooon.  We had her ID number and could watch on a screen what her status was, but that did little to ease my nerves.  We sat next to a fish tank in the waiting room - nice of them to give us something aside from soap operas on TV to watch - and there was one fish laying completely on it's side!  It looked a little bizarre and I guess the staff was pretty tired of people telling them their fish was dying cuz there was actually a note on the tank saying that the fish was, in fact, still living.  :O)  Ah, something to smile about.

Within minutes of Maelee's number popping into the post surgery column her doctor came out to let us know that everything had gone perfectly and that we would be able to see her within the hour.  The anesthes... oh never mind, it's too big a word!  The drug doc :O) came out and told us 15 min to an hour.  He quickly came back and said just kidding, she's awake and wants her Mommy and Daddy!!!  {Yay!}  Boy howdy was she CRUSTY!!!  I totally don't blame the poor kid, and since she had so much pain medicine in her body, it amplified the crusties like crazy.  I climbed up in bed with her and just held her and sang our lullaby until she fell asleep in my arms.  I felt a little funny lying in the bed while they wheeled us to her private recovery room in the pediatric ward but my baby needed her mommy so it was all good.  :O)

The next few days were pretty miserable so I'll just hit the most important bits.  Maelee's surgery was, officially, a bilateral ureteral reimplant - which in layman's terms means they went in kinda like a C-Section in her bladder and disconnected those tubes then reattached them correctly and closed her back up.  She emerged from the knife sporting an epidural which at one point settled into her right leg and made it go completely dead {that's a little unnerving when you're an adult, imagine being THREE!!  She rolled over and her leg didn't come with her - she FREAKED OUT!!  Yeah, try explaining that one to a 3 year old!}, it was sad and amusing to hear her shrieks of delight about every 30 min or so after they switched pain meds when a little feeling would come back into her leg, "I can MOVE MY TOES!!!".  LOL It was hard to watch her not be able to support her own weight when she tried to stand - her leg was total dead weight and of no use.  She was SO frustrated that she couldn't walk.  :O(  Unfortunately for the poor girl it also made her itch.  Like.  CRAZY.  Even with the medicine to counter that side effect she was still constantly scratching all over her body.  Aside from giving herself bleeding owies, at one point she actually scratched most of the tape holding the epidural tube in place clean off and the nurses had to come in and put new, super-duper sticky tape on her WHOLE back {why they didn't just remove the epidural and control her pain with oral meds is still a mystery to me} and just imagine how much fun it was to remove that super-duper sticky tape... After taking all the tape and sticky crap off over the next few days, Maelee was terrified of band aids!  "No, Mom!!  No band aid!"  Sad side effect...

The next listed pain in the rear during the whole experience was the poor kid's Foley catheter.  The tube itself didn't seem to bother her a whole lot, but one of the after-effects of her surgery was random bladder spasms.  Evidently it's not a very common thing, so the pediatric unit didn't have the countering medicine on hand to control them and getting it was a process.  Those spasms were SO miserable for her!  She would instantly get the feeling that she needed to pee.  NOW.  And it was so intense that she would suddenly stand up in bed and start sobbing, begging us to let her go to the bathroom - only problem is that she was hooked up to so many different tubes that it was a process to let her go anywhere.  We tried to explain to her that the pee wasn't stuck in her body, we even showed her the catheter tube and let her see the urine going into the bag but it didn't do anything to comfort her during a spasm.  It was awful.

Last "oh brother" was her IV.  It was almost in the crook of her arm so every time she bent it, the hose would kink and set off an alarm.  Geez.  Not cool.  It was just sad to see her so grumpy, she had so much crap being pumped into her that she was nowhere near "herself".  She was a step or two beyond crusty pretty much the entire hospital stay.

BUT there were some fun moments too - promise!  Kiki came as promised and had the best timing.  She and a cousin made it to our recovery room just as we were getting settled.  Kiki read Miss Maelee a story and they fell asleep in her bed together which was so sweet.  They stayed a few hours and we were SO glad she was able to come.  The next day Maelee really wanted a balloon so so badly so her nurse Maria brought one in just for her which totally made her day.  We heard there was some sort of national helium shortage and so her helium filled balloon was pretty special.  :O)  Then Russell and Jonnet brought Madi over to visit for a few hours the night after the surgery and brought her a Twilight Sparkle stuffed animal {those of you with girls probably know exactly who that is.  Madi and Maelee are SO into My Little Pony right now!} and a set of My Little Pony figurines.  We got her a few new books, night gowns, slippers and a Rainbow Dash baby doll {again with the My Little Pony LOL}.  She also was able to go into the courtyard of the pediatric ward and hold a couple bunnies and a chicken the last day we were there.  She was pretty stoked over that little adventure!  They gave us a wagon to pull her around in since she had so many tubes hanging all over the place.

Once we got home and had all the tape residue off and she could move around on her own she perked right up and was a lot more content.  It took about a week for all the steri-strips to fall off her incision site, but once they did she realized she was all better and started not only showing everyone {and by showing, I mean SHOWING!  Shirt up to her chin and bottoms almost to her knees!!} but after a bit she also wanted them to touch her "big owie"!  Funny girl.  We have finally trained her to be a little more modest in her showing off of the scar and after a few weeks life went completely back to normal.  She has to take a daily antibiotic for the first 3 months after the operation and will go back in for a final VCUG in December to make sure all is well.  She has over a 98% chance of a success so I'm pretty confident we'll be finished with this whole craziness by Christmas.  The only real recovery issue she had was going to the bathroom for the first few weeks.  It didn't hurt her, she just had to re-train her bladder to do it's job. Once it healed up enough to be able to stretch and fill up she was good to go.

I gotta tell ya, seeing your baby go through something like this is not fun.  I'm grateful that she has no clue what the concept of milking it is cuz I was all prepared to let her eat gogurts and watch movies all day for as long as she "needed" to, but she is too much like her Daddy to stay down for long.  We were told that as soon as she got on our nerves that meant she was better and we were over the stress of it...  I guess she is feeling GREAT!!!  Ha ha  She actually is doing amazing and is right back to her stinker-pot self.  Man alive I love that little girl and I am SO SO SO thankful I get to be her Mommy.  She is a light in our lives and everything, EVERYTHING is worth it to have her in our family.  She is one incredible little girl, and she is our incredible little daughter.  Love you Maelee.