Betsy Bailey

Bailey had a relatively easy surgical experience yesterday. No complications. She had a full, deep general (the procedure to get the fractured bone set was apparently a rather rough one – the ortho had to angle her arm in different directions to finagle it all back into the proper position – I was amazed to learn that doing this procedure in-office was an option. I suppose if I wanted to put her off horseback riding forever we could have gone with that… yikes!).

In spite of the heavy anesthesia, she came out of it fairly quickly and with no ill effects. Not even a speck of nausea. On the contrary, she was RAVENOUS and wanted to eat immediately. I was thrilled to assist with that. She had an excruciatingly long pre-op fast yesterday and it was killing me to not feed my child! She was released to go home within an hour of the surgery.

I cannot even express how glad I am that they were able to do this procedure yesterday. Scheduling conflicts aside, after a full day of living with her living with this injury it really hit me how uncomfortable it would be for her to live with that un-set fracture for any length of time. Her recovery could not truly begin until after the surgery.

Last night she ate and ate and ate some more. She took a nice long nap and woke up around 9:30 to have another snack. She was very alert and chatty at this time. During the surgery, the doctor gave her a nice big dose of novocaine. So she was completely pain free all night. I gave her a vicodin at bedtime and she had a lovely sleep all through the night. Yay!

She woke up around 6 am and texted me from the couch downstairs that she was hurting. One vicodin seemed to be enough to make her comfortable, so I think we’ll easily keep on top of the pain. She’s sitting and playing around on her computer now, feeling much, much happier that her bone feels “normal” again and having the scary anxiety of surgery now behind her. (She WAS really scared, too – I was a little surprised to see how high her blood pressure was before the procedure yesterday!)

She keeps commenting how sorry she is that she can’t help like she usually does (with Jake, with dishes, etc) and that she sorry that she needs so much help. “I can’t wait until I’m self-sufficient again!” My goodness, she really is an exceptional teenager. I am certain I would have milked it for all it was worth at that age!