The Poortinga's: Ellie's First Surgery

On Friday July 11, Miss Ellie Gayle took her turn for ear surgery. I tell you, I've never heard of two girls getting so many ear infections!! After fighting the same ear infection from April, the doctors finally decided that ear tubes were a necessity to allow the fluid that stayed in her ears (infected or not) to finally drain. We've done this surgery twice with Maree and she was a champ so I was expecting an easy morning of going in, quick surgery, great recovery.

Wow. I was sure wrong. That morning around 3 a.m. a transformer blew in our neighborhood causing our entire street to lose power. The girls both sleep with noise makers in their room, and unfortunately for Ellie, she's a light sleeper like me. She immediately woke to the noise maker shutting off and nightlight going out. Marc and I went to check the breaker box out side for all of 2 minutes, and by the time we came in, Ellie was an uncontrollable mess. She's not a kid who can be held/rocked back to sleep. AND since we were having surgery in 4 hours, I couldn't even give her a bottle to calm her down. SO lucky me, I got to deal with a screaming girl that entire time. Of course Maree woke up an hour later and of course she wanted to eat/drink. Ellie was SO not happy about this.

Then we get to the hospital and they did get her back into surgery pretty quickly… but when she came out of the anesthesia, I was expecting her to be just lovey/cuddly/tired like Maree was after her operations. Ellie, though, was again inconsolable. She cried the entire car ride home. She cried if I laid her down, cried if I held her. She was just a mess. I finally got her to sleep… and then she woke up like nothing ever happened and in the best mood ever. It was 10:30 at this point and I felt like we'd already lived an entire day. Exhausting! But Ellie muffin, you've been much happier since the surgery and we're hoping this is the end of your ear infections and that it won't cause any speech delays like it did your sister!!