cayla's trip to mercy hospital

We made a road trip this week to Mercy Hospital in Des Moines as Cayla needed to get some tubes put in her ears. The surgery was scheduled for 7:30. They wanted her there at 6 am and she couldn't eat anything until after surgery. We left a little before 5, slightly blurry-eyed and anxious that everything would go well. As you can see, Cayla wasn't sweating it at all. Whether standing up in the hospital lobby picture above or checking out her cool yellow socks, she took it all in stride. (We got to keep the socks, too! Yeah! Free stuff!!)

So the funny thing about this operation is that they want you there an hour and a half early and the surgery itself takes only ten minutes. That left quite a bit of time for us to hang out in the pre-op room. They brought Cayla the socks and a cool blue robe, which made her look like a little karate student. I was half expecting Mr. Miyagi to come in and clap his hands together for her surgery. He didn't.

Mom got a little nervous when she heard a nurse shaving a man across the hall in preparation for his major surgery. It made her think Cayla's surgery was going to be more major than we had anticipated. But Cayla did such a great job waiting and made it easy on us. She only fussed a little when her normal breakfast wasn't being delivered. Meanwhile, a few doctors popped in and had us sign stuff for the anesthetic they were going to give her. It basically amounted to laughing gas and wasn't all that strong.

Finally they came in, whisked her away, and said, "Wish us luck!" Just kidding about the comment. They just told us it wouldn't be long and they'd have her back soon. A short while and bad cup of coffee later, they called us back and brought her out to us. You could tell she was still a little out of it from the look in her eyes, but otherwise she was doing fine. And hungry. I LOVE this picture of Mom feeding her shortly after the surgery.