Ana's surgery

As I mentioned before Ana needed to get eye muscle surgery. Her right eye kept turning in toward her nose and patching and glasses helped but not enough to avoid surgery. She was a little nervous in the weeks leading up to the surgery, but nothing too serious. Then the day of the surgery came and that poor little girl got so scared and nervous and just kept incredibly quiet and reserved. I can only imagine what was going on in her little mind.
To ease the nerves a bit, we took her to build-a-bear so she could have something to keep her company in surgery. Needless to say she loved that part.

She chose a bunny and named her Delilah (named after a girl from Ali's school class in California). She chose a cute little outfit and put her in some glasses so she looked just like Ana.

Then onto Primary Children's. She was just as happy as could be with her little hospital outfit and Delilah. Then they had to put some drops in her eyes and she lost it. After that was done and she settled down she was pretty happy again.

They gave her some medicine to help with her nerves and put her in this little wagon to wheel her around in.

My sweet little Ana was so so brave. I'm so proud of how calm she was when she knew what was going to happen to her. This was our first experience as parents sending a child off to surgery, and I was not quite as brave as Ana. I put on a brave face, sure, but my heart was aching. They wheeled her to the end of the hall and we had to give our hugs and send her on her way. Dave gave her a hug and whispered a few things into her ear, and then I bent down and hugged her and she hugged me back so incredibly tight. She was crying, not the wailing and throwing a fit type crying, but the nervous and scared type. I tried to let go so they could take her and she hugged me even tighter, she didn't want to let go...neither did I. So we hugged a little longer and I don't remember exactly what I told her, something about being brave and that she's going to be just fine and that I loved her so much.
Then they took her away and since I didn't have to pretend to be brave any more the tears surfaced. I know it wasn't a big deal and that everything was going to be fine, but what made me sad was thinking about her all alone in there with all these strange people and it killed me not being able to be there with her. I was better a while later when I knew she would have been asleep and she didn't need me right by her side anymore.
Everything went perfectly in surgery. It took her a while to wake up. I was nervous for her to wake up because several people had told me that your child coming off of anesthesia is horrible. She woke up and was just the most pleasant little thing. She didn't cry, scream or freak out in any way. She just laid there with her poor little eyes closed drinking her little slushy until we could go. Then we got her in the car and she just sat there with her eyes closed and kept them closed the rest of the day.

She couldn't eat anything before hand, so we took her to McDonald's and got her whatever she wanted.

She looked like a little blind person feeling her way around. It was adorable.
She started to open her eyes a bit the next day. And then came the eye drops. She was more terrified of the eye drops (to prevent infection) then she was about anything to do with surgery. We really struggled for the first little while trying any incentive we could. After a couple days and quite the battle she was a pro at it. She earned a trip to see Toy Story 3 in the movie theater after the first week, and a zhu-zhu pet for the second week.
I truly am so proud of her and I hope that this fixed everything so we don't need to do this again.