Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: care, Chuck E. Cheese, daughter, doctors, drugs, funny, girls, horses, injury, kids, laughter, mother, nurses, surgery
I am a complete mess! I’m typing with my left hand only and my brain is going much faster than my hand can work and it’s making me nuts!!
Yesterday I had surgery on my right arm/elbow to repair a torn tendon. The injury occurred last July when i fell off of a horse, but on the advice of my primary care doctor (who diagnosed me with tennis elbow) I suffered through therapy and a shot. When the shot wore off I bypassed my doctor and went directly to a specialist who gave me a proper diagnosis and wa-la, I have a 70-90% chance that I’ll be all better, eventually.
But that’s not what this post is about. This post is about my FD. How could this have anything to do with FD you ask? Well, my biggest fear with this surgery was I had to go under anesthesia and that reminded of the time that FD got her adenoids removed.
She was only 5 years old and had been having chronic ear infections since she was 2 months old. After years of antibiotics I reached a boiling point, insisting that her pediatrician send her to an ear, nose, and throat specialist. He did and it was determined that the tonsils were fine but the adenoids had to go and she would be fitted with tubes to help her ear drums drain. This is a pretty standard procedure so we weren’t too worried, just happy that she would find relief!
The day of the surgery we arrived at the hospital. Both of my kids are pretty brave but FD is the most stoic, she wasn’t worried at all. The nurses were wonderful and took us both to the day surgerical prep room so that I could help her get into her gown. I kept assuring her that she would be fine and she kept telling ME that I had nothing to worry about and that she was fine. I reminded her again about our “deal’…..when she was all better I would take her to see the Italian rodent (aka: Chuck E. Cheese).
After she was prepped the nurse brought in a little shot glass of pink juice (happy medicine) and asked me to get her to drink it all down. I was told that this medicine was to help her “relax”, I didn’t know that she was getting high before my very eyes until she mentioned “Mommy, you have three heads”. “Really?” I responded, “and how many fingers am I holding up?” As I showed only one she responded that there were three! I began to chuckle which made her chuckle which made me laugh which made her laugh which made me cry and made her stop and say “wasso funnnnyyy?” which made me split my side open!
At this point the surgical nurse arrived and saw tears streaming down my face. She was so calm and caring when she tried to comfort what she thought was a mother in fear for her child’s life. She tried to tell me that “everything will be alright. This is a routine procedure and we’ll take very good care of your daughter.” As you can imagine this only made me laugh harder, which the nurse mistook for sobbing wails. I could hardly catch my breath enough to tell her that I was in hysterics because FD was higher than a kite and I hadn’t expected that at all! The nurse was not amused by this (apparently they come into contact with more crying parents than laughing) and she whisked my daughter away for her surgery.
She did great that morning! She was only in surgery for about an hour and when they came to the waiting room to bring me to see her the nurses were gushing about how great she was. they told me that most children wake up frightened but not FD, she woke up and announced “Now I get to go to Chuck E. Cheese!” The nurses were pretty impressed by that.
So I’m not going to Chuck E. Cheese anytime soon and it will be awhile before I go riding again….I think I like having the use of my right arm more than I like horses! When FD came home from school yesterday to see me laying in bed with my arm immobile and wrapped with a brace she was glad to see that I was OKand helped me get pillows to prop it up with. She’s 14 now and the tables have turned; I may need her more than she needs me or perhaps we’re even now. Either way we enjoy sharing funny memories like this one and I enjoy watching her grow into an amazing young woman!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: birthdays, cigarettes, daughters, Dr. Laura, friends, girls, kids, mistakes, parenting, priorities, smoking, stupidity, teenagers
Tomorrow FD turns 14.I can’t believe it, seriously, I cannot believe that I have a 14 year old…..who’s half an inch taller than me, and I’m not short! It got me thinking about all of the stupid stuff I did at her age, and it made me very thankful that I’m a much more involved parent than CAM ever was (but this is not about CAM!).
By the time I reached the age of 14 I had already tried my first cigarette (and that’s all I’m telling you about). I will NEVER forget this story, mainly because I learned what an incredible idiot I was. I was about 12 or 13 and CAM was always working all the time, she didn’t get home until late. My friend Lisa was planning on coming over after school and when we got home she produced a cigarette that she had stolen from her mom. We really had no idea what to do with it but we were so excited we couldn’t stand it! Since we were so afraid that someone would see us, we decided that the best place to try this cancer stick would be in my bathroom, window open, fan on……that should take care of the smell right? Wrong. CAM came home about 2 hours after we had lit up and she could smell it from the front door to the back of the house. I was toast, as usual. Funny thing was that her ranting was so normal that I think I took to tuning her out really well. I’ve repressed the memories of the punishments……that’s not a joke, I seriously don’t remember what happened even though I know I was punished!
My point is that with everything that the kids are being taught in school there is no way that FD would even think about trying a smoke. The schools have these kids scared so straight I am amazed. And I’m not the only mom that feels this way. When I talk to other moms about what we did at this age versus what our girls are doing now we all laugh and thank God that we’re able to keep better track of our kids. And maybe that’s why we do it. CAM didn’t make me a priority and most of my other friends had moms that worked and simply trusted that the kids would be okay and stay out of trouble. But for those of us that got into trouble we’re so knowledgeable about what the kids could be doing that we’ve made a conscious effort to be home when the kids get home from school or volunteer in the classroom or get to know our kids’ friends parents or install home alarm systems in an effort to keep the kids in (not burglars out)!
Either way I’m thankful for the fact that the schools are doing a great job with drug and tobacco education, that there are people like Dr. Laura who aren’t afraid to tell people that kids are the priority, NOT careers and I’m mostly thankful for the knowledge that I gained through my own stupidity. My hope is that my children learn from my mistakes and that they benefit from my knowledge of what NOT to do! Well, one can hope!
