Plastic Surgery

I never thought I'd take my daughter to a plastic surgeon, especially not my three-year-old daughter. Life as a parent is full of unexpected twists and turns.

After the dermatologist recieved Abby's biopsy results in December, he recommended we take her to a plastic surgeon for the removal of her entire birthmark.

We arrived at the hospital yesterday morning pretty early. There wasn't a lot of traffic like there was the day we took her in for the consultation. She spent about an hour watching tv and playing in the waiting room.

They took us back into the pre-op room and about 95 different doctors and nurses came in to check her vitals and ask us questions. She was sick a few weeks back and broke out in a rash while taking amoxicillin. She hasn't been tested for an allergy yet, but she still got an extra "allergy" hospital bracelet because they don't want to take any chances. Allegry testing is the next thing on our list for this poor girl.

She looked so cute in her little hospital clothes. She was such a good girl. She was very cooperative and pleasant. Everyone was impressed with her sweet nature and thought she was adorable, of course. Her only complaint was that she was hungry and thirsty. She wasn't able to have anything to eat or drink before the procedure.

They gave her an anti-anxiety medication to help her be calm when they would take her away from us into the operating room. It made her kind of loopy and she was cracking me up. She was holding on to the rail of the bed and kept asking, "Why am I holding on to this?"

After that medication had really started working they wheeled her away and took Sam and I to the waiting room. We made some hot chocolate in a fancy pants machine and sat down to wait. We had been waiting for about 20 minutes when the doctor came in to tell us that he was finished and that a nurse would come get us when Abby was waking up. It was kind of strange being in a room full of parents who were waiting while their child had surgery. I felt blessed that Abby's wasn't for something very serious as I'm sure some of the other children were having much more invasive procedures.

About 15 minutes later, a nurse came and took us to see Abby. Her little face was swollen from IV fluids and she was still really groggy. She ate a blue popsicle that Sam fed to her because it was too heavy for her weak little arm to hold. She was in really good spirits and only cried a little when the nurse removed all of the tape holding her IV and other monitoring devices.

After a while we headed home, stopping for a Slurpee on the way. She was back to her normal self by the afternoon.

We are so grateful that everything went well and are especially grateful for disolvable stitches this time.