The really sucky part....

Post-op sucks.

Kelley went to recovery at a little bit after 2:30, and she woke up almost immediately after arriving in the recovery room. The tough part is that she opened her eyes and started crying that she was hurting. I almost lost it. The nurse, Sara, was wonderful, and gave her a little more pain relief. She drifted off a little bit and a few minutes later woke up again asking for something to drink. She was allowed ice chips initially, and we slowly started giving her some sips of water during her recovery.

Sara, our recovery nurse, was very kind and helpful, and to make her smile she blew up a glove and drew a princess face on it - it's really cute.

She was quite woozy, but after some water and some time, we got her up and went back to the hotel.

Of course, Ryan starts freaking out at this point for a snack (mommy's on duty), and so we had a lovely ride back to the hotel with one kid screaming and crying for food and the other one of the verge of throwing up. Poor girl, she was totally green.

We've had trouble tonight with her keeping food down. She's thrown up nearly everything we've given, and has only started keeping food down in since about 8:15 or so. She's sleeping right now.

As you can see by the pictures, she has a large sock-type headband bandage on, and it is keeping an ear cup that protects her new ear in place. She has two suctions coming away from the surgery site to keep the fluid from collecting around the site. We have to drain it occasionally. (Not for the faint hearted.) She also has a marcaine pump attached to her muscle graft site on her stomach (where they took the graft from). Marcaine is a topical anesthetic and it is keeping her tummy skin comfortable. She will wear the pump for two days.

She's such a trooper. She was sitting on the couch tonight watching The Little Mermaid (we completely reinforced the Princess obsession this last weekend) and while she was feeling really sick she said "Mommy, I don't like this surgery." I asked her why and she said "I don't know, I'm just sad. This doesn't feel very good." But she rallied and her spirits perked up until she finally drifted off to sleep at around 9:15.

The good news is, that the surgery went very smoothly, and Dr. Reinisch was cautiously optimistic that we wouldn't have to have a second surgery for refinement. That remains to be seen, however, but we certainly hope that is the case.

Thanks again, everyone!