Hey guys - things aren't going so well - Laurel has been admitted to the hospital...
Basically, she didn't do so well coming out of
the anesthesia, because of the "junk in her chest" that Bob
and I argued over the existence of this very morning:
Me: I still wonder what the anesthesiologist is going to make of that
cough [which incidentally kept Laurel up pretty much all night last
night].
Bob: It's just coming from stuff in her throat. She doesn't have
anything in her chest or the pediatrician would have heard crackling
sounds.
Me: Not hearing crackling sounds just means that she doesn't have
pneumonia, it doesn't mean that there's nothing in her chest.
Bob: How would it get into her chest? When it drains down her throat, it
goes into her stomach.
Me: But I can feel it in her chest.
Bob: You're NOT feeling it in her chest. It's in her throat.
Me: Don't tell me what I'm feeling!
It went on for some while past that, but you get the idea. Anyway, her
sats were really crummy coming out of anesthesia (I think I heard
50's?), they had to put her on oxygen, and they wound up taking a chest
x-ray which thankfully didn't reveal pneumonia but did show lots of the
supposedly non-existent junk (I'm ticked at Bob for not believing me,
can you tell? 
Although even more ticked at the anesthesiologist for not checking it
out for himself. Men...). She also seems to be in a fair amount of pain,
which we really hadn't expected and are kind of baffled by - it turned
out that some of it was due to the cast (which goes all the way around
her hips and lower waist but only down the left leg) cutting into her
right thigh - they cut some of that away and that brought her some
relief. But she was miserable again when I left (I'm home to take a
quick nap and get my stuff, we didn't get a private room and her mom is
staying with the other girl so I'm on duty) and also spiking a fever of
101.2 under her arm! She hasn't run a fever at all up to this point.
They did put her on IV antibiotics after they got her into the
post-anesthesia care unit.
So, please send lots of positive, healing thoughts for her - we sure
hadn't thought it would go like this... 
[Posted by Bob]
She's doing much better. And I admit I was very wrong. I've admitted
it several times now. Bad, bad, Bob. Very wrong.
She was looking almost bright eyed when I left - but really I'm sure
that was just in comparison to how she had been. The Tylenol with codeine
knocked down most of the fever and she slept for almost 2 hours. She was
waking off and on for the last hour before I left. She clearly needs to
cough, but she's also feeling much better. Cutting away the cast that
bit around her leg really helped her relax. A really nice woman from
church brought us some dinner and breakfast for Rochelle and things to
snack on (some of that was from other people at church). Hopefully
everyone can get a good nights sleep tonight (the kid in the next bed is
also pretty miserable). And hopefully the stuff in her lungs will start
clearing up and Laurel can come home tomorrow. Although managing that
cast is going to be interesting. She probably can't go more than 20
degrees from completely flat and 3 weeks of that is not going to be fun.
Changing her diaper is also, um, interesting. Hopefully we can manage it
with 2 people and eventually 1 person but the first time today it took 3
people.
Ugh. One day at a time, one step at a time.
And did I mention how very wrong I was. Well, I was. Very.
Laurel
was discharged this afternoon. She's doing much, much better. She
was taken off oxygen at 1 AM, at which point her fever was gone as well.
It was a rough night - seemed like I was awake for some reason every
half hour or so till about 2:30, when she started screaming and got
Tylenol 3 and Valium. The nurse offered morphine as well, but I said
"let's wait and see if she settles first" and she did. But
then at 4 she started moaning, moaned for a few minutes, stopped,
started again, and kept on that way till 5 at which point I called the
nurse and said, "On second thought, give her the morphine." As
Bob says, it was probably something like gas and I'm not sure I would
have made that choice at another time. To make me feel worse about it,
she then set off the monitor a couple of times - the nurse said it was
her heart rate and that it was below what the threshold was set at for
the beeping but it was OK. And then at 7 air got into her IV line, and I
had to correct her medication order and give the nurse instructions on
how to mix her formula. Bob called at 8, and I think it was about 8:30
when the feeding pump finished and started beeping that I finally gave
up and got up.
So a long night, but despite that, she seems much more herself today,
and the chest x-ray looked good. The last thing that held up her
discharge was that when the OT (who happens to be a friend of ours, one
of our friends who adopted from China) and PT came to help figure out
how her car seat and wheelchair were going to work with the new cast
(one good thing - although she has to be flatter in the wheelchair than
I feel comfortable with for oral feeding
, it's still not as flat as we were afraid she'd be), they voiced the
same concern that we had that her cast was rubbing against her ribs on
the right side. Well, we had a heck of a good nurse today, and she
nagged until she got a resident out of surgery. He was clearly annoyed
at being pulled away for our lowly problem and informed us that it would
be a really big deal, quite difficult to fix, and we didn't have any
anesthesia, and it just couldn't be done today, and didn't need to be
done anyway, and if we saw her skin breaking down we could just bring
her to the clinic. But A-1 nurse went and fetched the OT and PT back and
they argued with him too and he broke down and sawed the bit off the
cast, and guess what? Not such a big deal. It took a couple of minutes
and didn't faze Miss Laurel one bit. But one of his parting shots was,
"I doubt she'll get the cast off in three weeks, it'll probably be
six." I hope that he was just being cranky and not speaking truth!!
But now he's got me worried. Is this ever going to end?
But, at any rate, we are home, Laurel is clearly mending, and yet
another of the bumps in the roller coaster has been navigated...
So far, Laurel is very
sleepy today. Of course, school was canceled, because you can't have
school in this state with 2" of snow on the ground! 
So I'm not sure if we'd have sent her or not, but it was obvious last
night that it was a moot point. She hasn't been back since they sent her
home last Tuesday. We are still having to periodically give her Valium
and/or Tylenol 3 for pain, and we're really wondering if we should still
be having to do that at this point, but we have an appt with the
pediatrician anyway today as a follow-up for the cough so we will talk
to her about it. I'll let you know what we learn!
Oh, and how am I...um, feeling pretty ground-down at this point. My head
hurts, my back hurts, the tendons leading from my wrists hurt (I've been
seeing a doctor for that one, but we haven't made very good progress yet
- I have to call him today and I think he's going to give me a referral
to a PT), I feel like all I'm doing is either trying to comfort Whiny
Girl, do some sort of damage control (this cast is SO awkward with
bodily functions), or working, which I am WAY behind on, and I feel like
I've forgotten what fun even looks like. So I guess I'm feeling like a
Whiny Girl myself.
The pediatrician appt went OK. The ped thinks that maybe the pain we
are seeing isn't so much from the leg but intestinal discomfort from the
antibiotic, so she prescribed a different one. She said Laurel's chest
sounded MUCH better.
Laurel overall did fairly well today and seemed grateful to get out of
the house, so we were all ready to try sending her to school tomorrow -
but it's closed again due to the snow! WAH!
Today we got our appt for the x-ray to see how her leg is healing and
whether the cast can come off - it's February 22 at 10:15. If you've got
any spare healing thoughts, send 'em her way - I SOOOO would love to get
the cast off that day!!
Laurel just went to school for the first time since the re-casting
today - part of that was because there were two snow days last week but
also, she has been waking up screaming most mornings and since school
starts so early (7:45) it's been a tough call to send her. I think the
the screaming at this point is that more than a couple of hours in any
position in that cast is painful, and also that her gas pain is still
pretty bad - and probably will be until a) she can move more b) she's
off antibiotics. She's been settling down after a while, so Bob worked
out with the special-ed teacher who's kind of been serving as her
coordinator that we'd try sending her late this morning (9:00), so
that's what happened. Bob took her and wasn't very hopeful - he said she
was really whiny when he left - but she was like that when we took her
in the first day after she got the other casts and then settled down
after we left, so I'm hoping it will be the same today.
Of course, we're expecting an ice storm tonight so I imagine that will
be it for her going to school for another day or two. 
Keep those healing thoughts coming - we SO want this over with, Bob and
I both agree that it's the worst thing we've been through with her since
she was a baby...
Are you an awful person if you clean the little tiny poop spots off
your dress shirt with Clorox Bleach Stick, because you have to go back
in tonight to talk to a college class and you're running short of dress
clothes? And you really hadn't taken into account how much poop goes
EVERYWHERE with your daughter in a hip cast? Just, you know,
theoretically asking...not like my sleeve is damp and smelling slightly
of bleach or anything...
Laurel's appt to see if she can get her cast off is in 21 hours and 1
minute, but who's counting?
I'm looking at it as sort of a Groundhog Day thing - if the doctor sees
his shadow, it's 3 more weeks of cast...
The cast is off!!
It wasn't any too clear that it was going to be coming off - the
first person who looked at the x-ray just said "It's healing"
and the second person asked how she was doing with the cast and we said
that her skin was breaking down where the right leg was hitting the cast
and that the cast was getting really nasty around the edges of the
diaper area and he said, "We'd really like to get it to last a bit
longer." At which point I told Laurel that she would be wearing the
cast for a while longer and we were just waiting for the doctor to tell
us for how long. But when the orthopedist finally showed up, he looked
at the x-ray and looked at her and asked us a bunch of questions, and
finally pronounced that he thought the cast should come off today and
she should wear a brace, and he'd follow up with her in six weeks.
Taking the cast off went pretty well until the nurse got to the inside
of Laurel's leg - afterwards I realized that that was because she'd
sliced Laurel's leg! (Just a surface wound, but I bet it hurt, and then
stung some more when the nurse put lotion on her leg later.) The
aftermath was really hard for Laurel - I think she was having muscle
spasms, plus the skin was really tender, plus the cut hurt. But the
nurse had to wash her down (it was gross in there, despite our
best efforts stuff had gotten up in there, but I guess it's some comfort
that the nurse said she had seen much worse and that actually Laurel's
skin looked pretty good) and coat her with lotion, and then the brace
fitting began. There's a band that goes around her waist (and the devil
with that was trying to get enough cut out that it didn't rub the g-tube
- still not totally sure we've got it), and then two metal rods
extending from it that connect to cuffs that go around her thighs. The
fitting was very rough on Laurel at first, but by the third round or so
she was starting to relax and so exhausted that she was falling asleep
while we were sitting her up to look at the fit.
When I last saw her, she was falling asleep in her car seat. I'll be
heading home after a 2:00 chiropractor appt. Bob wasn't hopeful about
her going to school tomorrow because of her leg being painful, but I'm
more optimistic about her recovery rate. I think it was just a very hard
morning for her. I know *I'm* wiped! 
Bob's version - to the Nov 2000 playgroup:
UPDATE - lots of pain still.
She screams every time she's moved even a tiny bit. Even on valium
and Tylenol with codeine. When we called the doctor's nurse she said he
wanted to see her right away and we just got back from there.
The good news is that the bone itself looks great. Lots of new growth
around the original osteotomy and the subsequent break 3 weeks ago also
looks good. So, it must be "just" inflammation.
Fortunately, she's resting well when she isn't being moved and she did
sleep 6 hours last night before the drugs wore off. The bad news is that
we can expect this pain to last awhile and she won't be back in school
for a week to 10 days if we can believe the doctor's prediction. But man
is it hard to see her in such pain every time I lift her for anything.
Rochelle's version - to the Over 35 group:
WAH!!! Getting the cast off has definitely not been all I'd hoped...
We've been having to keep Laurel heavily sedated and even at that,
every time we move her, she screams. You can imagine that by this
morning we were climbing up the doctor's walls, and he said to bring her
right in (guess he learned his lesson after the fracture) and we got
more x-rays, but this time there was nothing visible. So he concluded
that it was an "inflammatory reaction" (I never was completely
clear exactly what was inflamed or why, even though I asked). He said
that sometimes this happens and we could expect that Laurel will
probably be out of school 7-10 days.
So much for my "Yay, Laurel's got the cast off, now we can go to
our friend's Chinese New Year party and maybe the Maymont Flower Show
this weekend." We ain't goin' nowhere.
Only good news I have to report is that yesterday I found out that one
of our former babysitters who did a respite weekend for us a couple of
years ago is moving back to town - and she's already agreed to do
another respite weekend this spring. Boy howdy, are we going to need
that...
[Posted by Bob]
I don't think Laurel's doing any better because when you move her leg
or lift her she's obviously in a lot of pain.
On the other hand, if you just let her be she doesn't seem to be in any
pain. So it's not like it's a constant level of pain. There may be some
gentle movements we couldn't do at all last week that we can do now
without causing a lot of pain, but that's so hard to tell. Sometimes I
think we've just figured out in more detail what hurts and what doesn't
and the what hurts is still pretty much the same.
The doctor said to give it a week and then call him if it doesn't seem
any better so we're waiting until Thursday. At this point, I expect
another trip to the doctor to watch him shake his head and wonder what's
going on. My bet is that this really isn't just inflammation but on the
other hand, I saw the x-rays and I couldn't see anything obvious so that
would seem to imply something going with the soft tissue.
It's very frustrating, somewhat scary (not knowing) and man are we all
tired of not being able to go anywhere together. We can't even make any
plans because there's no way to know how long this is going to last.
Plus, I have a nasty cold and stayed home today (Laurel may have had it
last week - although maybe not this bad).
Well, I'm afraid Bob is largely right...although it drives me crazy
that he's been hammering at it since about an hour after we left the
doc's office last week! He can never take a mental break and just wait
and see. But I have to say that Laurel is not substantially better - she
is still screaming when we move her. Not only that, her foot's swollen -
whatever THAT could mean! Bob thought it might be positional but we had
her on the floor with her foot elevated all night and it didn't make any
difference. But I think we will probably not take her back to the doctor
till tomorrow anyway, because Bob had to go to West Virginia today and I
don't think I'm up to single-handedly schlepping her, with the problem
I've been having with my arms. I'd kind of expect that we'd start out at
the clinic and then probably get sent to the hospital for a scan (we're
thinking that since nothing showed on the x-ray, they'd probably have to
do an MRI or CT scan to see what's going on with the soft tssue). And
then who knows.
So anyway, Laurel and I are here by ourselves for about 12 hours today.
She's actually quite calm as long as you don't try to move her, so it's
not like it's going to be an incredible ordeal - just a long day. (Of
course, I will have to move her a few times to change her
diaper.) Meanwhile, I'm fighting off the family cold. Hard to say who'll
win at this point, although Cold-Eeze is working better than I thought
it was going to at first.
Oh, and I got BAD NEWS yesterday - the summer program in San Francisco
is already full! We've been put on a waiting list, but it depends on
whether and when any of the families signed up (it's full of the regular
year-round students) take a vacation. We're supposed to find out in the
next several weeks. We hadn't planned to go originally because we'd
hoped to get our baby this summer or fall, but when it got to be clear
that that wasn't going to happen until at least 2008, I contacted the
friends we stay with and started to make plans. If a space doesn't open,
I'm not sure what we'll do - either find an alternative therapy program
somewhere (it would have to be a different type, that's the only program
of its kind - and then there is always the problem of how we would
afford to stay for long enough) or just try taking Laurel on vacation, I
guess.
That's the latest from here - I'm feeling pretty worried and depressed
today. Like Bob said when he got up with Laurel last night (at least it
was only one time last night, that's better than it has been), "I
just want this hell to end!"