Number 15

J and I spent most of the day in the city today at the Children's Hospital. An MRI of her ankle last month showed swelling and inflammation from arthritis there, and is, we believe, causing her to run and walk with a very stiff gait.

Because of the success of the steroid injections in her knees last year, the Rheumatologist (and we now have a new one) recommended injecting her ankle. She also recommended doing the procedure under anesthesia because of how difficult the knee injections were for her.

When we checked in to Same Day Surgery this morning, the ladies at the front were initially concerned about the fact that J ate cherry jello at 8:30 this morning. They assigned her the number 15, and that is how they called us from the waiting rooms all day. Later on, the Pre-Op Nurse and Anesthesia Resident were concerned about a loose tooth. J was seemingly not concerned about much. She and I passed the time reading cards from Bella's Mystery Deck, and trying to solve the mysteries.

Everything went very smoothly. They even let me walk back to the procedure room with J, stay with her and hold her hand while she went to sleep, and kiss her before leaving for the waiting room. All this business is like a day on the job for me, and since J was at ease, I could be too.

Being at Children's again, made me extremely grateful (again) that my children are in such good health. A toddler recovering near J in the PACU had a bad accident with a cut and fracture swelling his arm to three times its normal size. I watched a young mother in tears as she waited to hear news of the infant that she had been nursing in Pre-Op just a couple of hours earlier. Back home, one of L's little friends was diagnosed with a fractured leg, and may not walk on it for 3 weeks.

After dinner, JP wheeled J in my grandmother's wheelchair to the bathroom, and she came out in tears. We applied ice, and put on a movie for distraction, but she was shaking with pain and had no relief until JP gave her some pain medication. This was very UN-like our experience last year, where she felt so much better right away that it was hard to keep her down for 24 hours as instructed. I rubbed her back, while JP read from "More Adventures of the Great Brain". She finally started to relax about 20 or 30 minutes after taking the medication, and we got her settled down on a little bed on the floor of our room.

Little L was distraught about sleeping downstairs by herself, so Kali's bed was moved in there to sleep with her. Musical beds all around!

This too will pass. In a couple of days J will be up and running around again. I just feel a bit guilty for making her go through this thing that hurt her...again.