Olivia's Day at the Hospital

One Happy Baby

As most of you know, Olivia had a visit to the ear doctor at the end of June. The hearing tests gave unclear results for the 4th time, and after a thorough examination the doctor had reason to believe that she would benefit from getting tubes put in her ears. The doctor thought that her right ear might be ok, but that she has at least some hearing loss in her left ear. This has been somewhat suspected all along, but now the doctors have informed us now that something is definitely wrong with the structure of the inside of her ear. This was of course sad news for us, although we were warned over a year ago that the medicines Olivia was being given to stay alive could possibly affect her hearing. At that point nothing else mattered. Slight hearing loss is not a big deal in the whole scheme of things. And after all of the battles Olivia has already won in her short life, I don't think something like a hearing aid would stop her from doing anything. :)

The procedure was scheduled for the end of July. Tero and I decided that I would be the one to go with her there (while Tero stayed at home with Sofia and Matias), even though I knew I might get emotional. Putting tubes is a very common procedure and I knew I didn't have to be worried, but somehow the thought of spending even one minute in the hospital with a scared baby seemed to be a lot for me to handle. Especially because it was Olivia. I knew I would cry, but I wanted to be there for her.

Olivia and I headed off on the bus at 6 a.m. on the morning of the procedure. She was really happy in spite of the early wake-up. A very friendly nurse greeted us at the hospital, and Olivia burst into tears as soon as she saw the white coat the nurse had on. Poor thing! I honestly don't know if she can remember her whole hospital experience, but sometimes it seems like it. I got tears in my eyes, because Olivia is not normally afraid of strangers at all. She was scared, and that made me sad.

I got to go into the operating room with Olivia and hold her while she was put to sleep. I tried to take many deep breaths so that I could stay strong for Olivia, but those operating rooms have such bad memories for me (miscarriage, emergency c-section with Matias, post-pregnancy complications, etc.) that just the atmosphere in the room made me tense up immediately. Olivia struggled so hard when they put the mask on her...screaming, kicking, thrashing her head, fighting to get free. I'm sure that anyone who sees their baby like this would find it hard not to cry. I tried to tell Olivia that everything was ok while I gulped down the biggest lump in my throat and tried to blink away the tears. As soon as she was almost out, I was quickly asked to leave the room. I felt so awful when I left. I knew she would be ok, but still felt horrible. I wanted to stay with her, I wanted to be there when she woke up, and most of all I didn't want her to be scared and alone. I looked for the nearest bathroom, locked the door, and cried until the lump in my throat was gone.

Since I hadn't had breakfast, I went to the cafe to get a snack and some coffee. I wrote some text messages to Tero to let him know how everything was going. After only about 40 minutes, the nurses called me and said that I could go to see Olivia. She had woken up and she was really unhappy. I ran as fast as I could to the recovery room so I could hold her. She was crying a lot, but drifted back to sleep as soon as I held her. When she finally woke up completely, we took her back to her hospital room so she could have some food. She was pretty hungry after 15 hours of being without food! I fed her a small jar of baby food, played with her for awhile, and after about an hour the nurse said I could try to feed her some lunch. As she was eating, I noticed that she had a red mark under her eye. By the time lunch was over, I noticed the mark was turning a deeper shade of red. Not knowing what it was, I went down the hallway to ask the nurse about it. During the short walk down the hallway, half of her face had turned bright red. The nurse was alarmed and called a doctor to ask about the situation. During the phone call, Olivia's forehead and the other half of her face started turning bright red. Her whole head suddenly looked puffy. The nurses started getting really worried in case it would go to her throat and compromise her breathing, so they had 3 different doctors on the phone giving advice. It seemed that they didn't have the right kind of medicine there, so I would need to take Olivia to the emergency room at the Children's Hospital. Thankfully one of nurses was told that we could try one allergy medicine that they had there. As soon as we got it into Olivia's mouth, she vomited everything out. The nurses got back on the phone again and were given permission to give another medicine. This one stayed down and after 5 minutes, the rash started fading. Phew! The doctors were pretty sure that it was an allergic reaction to the anesthesia, so hopefully she won't have to go through that again.

The rest of the day went really well (although it was LONG) and we got permission to go home just before dinner. It was a nice surprise, because the doctors had warned us that with Olivia's condition it would be likely that we would have to stay overnight in the hospital for monitoring.

Since the surgery, Olivia has changed a lot. She seems happier and a lot more alert. She's also moving more and making all sorts of different sounds that she never made before. She just has a little sparkle in her eye that wasn't there before. I'm not sure if the tubes are helping her hearing (or even her general well-being) but we are hopeful. Her hearing will be tested again this fall, so we'll find out more then. Fingers crossed for the bravest little girl on the block!