Jane's surgery

Last week Jane had to have surgery and though the issue was a minor one, the surgery wasn't as minor. She had to be intubated under general anesthesia, which was of course nerve-wracking for me. Originally, my mom was going to come down and watch Eleanor because the last thing I wanted was to be worrying about her when I should be focused on Jane, but last minute, she broke her arm and was an able to come down. After much distress on Monday and Tuesday, Auntie Erika was able to rearrange her entire schedule to come down and help us. This was seriously a godsend, as we needed someone very early in the morning and on a sort of open-ended basis because we didn't know when we'd be back. Thank you, thank you Erika! She even came up with some fun crafts for Eleanor to do while she was here.

We left Eleanor and Erika early in the morning and headed up to Richmond where Jane's doctor is.

Surprisingly, Jane had surgery on the same floor I used to work at when I was in school in Richmond five years ago!

She was super fussy in the morning because she was unable to eat, but the anesthesiologist gave her a little "calm down" medicine and sweet Jane was definitely "happy" after that. The nurse even brought her a little car to play it while she waited.

Peekaboo from Katie Stratton on Vimeo.

They ended up taking Jane early to the OR which was good because her surgery ended up taking about 20 minutes longer then they had initially scheduled it for. This was, of course, super stressful for me while we waited in the waiting room for news. Here Jane heads off with her CRNA "Mimi"

In the end, everything went just fine.

Our only negative part of the whole experience was that Jane had a nasty emotional reaction to the anesthesia. She basically cried inconsolably much of the day which was very frustrating and draining. By the second day though, the only complaint she seemed to have was a sore throat from the intubation and our sweet Jane was back to her normal self personality-wise besides being a little clingy and needing a little extra attention. We are very thankful to the VCU medical team for a good experience.