big warning - yucky pics ahead.....

Ain't gonna lie. Today was not easy. We went to Children's Hospital LA to haver Kelley's bandages changed out and her suction catheters removed. Removing the catheters was painful for her, but honestly washing and combing her hair was worse.

First of all we got to the clinic and waited for more than an hour. Kelley didn't mind, because it was a cool kids waiting room, but still! Anyway - they called us back, removed her head sock, and you can see by the medusa picture that her hair was a total disaster.

Dr. Reinisch removed the suction catheters and it scared her and it hurt, so she cried a little. They had a TV in the exam room and she was soon distracted by The Fox and the Hound.

Nurse Pam washed her hair, and when John started combing it out she got really scared. I mean real, deep, fear. She kept begging him not to comb the hair on the side of the surgery. Nurse Pam brought her a Fairytopia Barbie, and she was happy about it, but still really freaked. Her hair was a matted mess, and was still super tangled after washing and conditioning, so it was a tough stretch.

We succeeded (Rather, John succeeded. What a man.) and she got a new head sock, much to everyone's dismay. It's a pain in the butt. She has to wear it with the ear cup for 2 more weeks at least, and it makes her itch so bad we're in for a long stretch I'm afraid. We are going to have to change it ourselves next week. Bummer.

So, the picture you see of her ear is pretty gruesome, I know. Right now, it is very swollen and is standing away from her head quite a bit. The swelling will subside over the next few weeks, and as it heals will start to pull closer to her head. They did have to cut a large section of her hair, and that was in order to access a piece of the anatomy called the fascia. It's what gave her new ear it's blood supply. The site on her tummy was to give her skin behind her ear - they wanted to try to match the color on the outside of the ear from the skin behind it, and needed to replace that skin with skin from her tummy.

We let her choose where she wanted to go for lunch, and she chose "Grape House" aka Olive Garden.

We had a but of a scare this evening as when we got back to the hotel she started getting a fever. We gave her an extra dose of antibiotic and some Tylenol and the fever broke. Phew!

We are headed home tomorrow and should be back at the house in the early evening. Thank you all so much reading and for your support. It means so much to us.