But I did want to do something to commemorate it since it was one of (if not THE) best days of my life and I want to ensure that Ava knows that, despite any other feelings she may eventually have regarding that date. I do realize that although it was a day of exceptional gain for us, that gain came at a great loss of many things for her. I can only hope we can ultimately balance those things out by providing her with a family that loves her beyond measure.

At the very least there was going to be cake and presents – except there was nary an egg or a cake mix in the house – so a trip to T.arget was in order. I was beyond excited at the thought of getting out of my house for the first time in a week and a half. Way more excitement than a quick trip like that would normally engender but hey, you try being stuck inside with only daytime TV for company and see how desperate you get for a change of scenery.

Out trip was successful. Cake ingredients procured, as were some odds and ends gift-y things for her, and since I didn’t keel over in the middle of the store (although I felt like having J push me in the cart once we’d made about half a lap around the perimeter) we celebrated with Starb.ucks on the way out. Grande hot chocolate, skim with no whipped is my drink of choice (I don’t do coffee – ever) and Ava always gets a sip or two.

But since this was a special occasion we treated her to her very own cup this time. Whole milk WITH whipped cream – WOOT!

Her first Starbucks:

It was a hit – for about 3 sips. Then she ever so sweetly asked Daddy to hold it and refused to take it back again.

I’m okay with that. Much easier on my pocketbook anyway and she is always welcome to share mine.

By the way, frosting in an aerosol can? OMG – it’s even better than Easy Cheese.

One that munched on my kid while she was lying defenseless on her cot, deep in sleep. And the little beast bit hard, too. Through an undershirt and a fleece, it still left deep teeth marks that very nearly broke the skin and left a perfect, bruised outline on her left shoulder blade. It hurt her, too. She was favoring that side and had a hard time sitting or laying comfortably.

And no one knew who did it. There were two suspects, both new transplants into the 2 year old room, but no one actually saw the bite happen and Ava, as a reputable witness, is pretty unreliable (if she even knew anyway). For example, when J asked her who bit her she said, “Mama did it.” When I asked her who bit her she told me, “Emma did it.” Since I was still on lockdown and unable to drive and Emma is our dog who won’t go within 10 feet of Ava at the best of times and certainly didn’t head on out for a 16 mile round trip to sneak in and bite her I’m pretty sure that Ava’s testimony wouldn’t hold water in judicial proceedings of any type.

Since I wasn’t there, J channeled me and raised holy hell with them as to why the opportunity even happened since they were all supposed to be napping on their individual cots. And demanded to know why, if these two kids are known biters, they weren’t being supervised a little more closely during this naturally tumultuous transition stage. Ava was not the first, or even the second, child to be bitten in as many days.

Bottom line: An extra staff member was added to the room for assistance until things settle down and I’m so proud of J for pulling a me until an acceptable resolution was reached because I know, I know, that J was way nicer and more diplomatic than I would have been. My mama bear instincts were raging and all I wanted to do was hunt the little bloodsucker down with a stake at that point.

I guess we should count ourselves lucky that in nearly 2 years of daycare this is our first (and hopefully only) biting incident.

The get well gifts were very thoughtful. Spa sets, a cheese basket (still puzzling over this one a bit but I LOVE the basket it came in – it was repurposed right away to hold Ava’s hairbows), and even a snack bouquet.

The snack bouquet was very cute but I think J enjoyed it even more than I did. I had to near fight him for the KitKat bar and he somehow managed to snag the oreos when I wasn’t looking. Although, in all seriousness, food wasn’t even the slightest bit interesting or appetizing at this point anyway (except for KitKat bars). I love the snack bouquet idea though and will definitely use this in the future. It looks pretty easy to make – sticks glued on to the backs of the packages and stuck into florist foam with a little bit of green cellophane arranged to look like grass.

But the best gift?

My visits with this little thing (especially once she decided she liked me again):

That’s the best medicine on Earth.

Well, that depends on how you look at it, I guess.

D-Day itself was fine. Despite our rocky start at daycare drop off (which is sadly not unusual when I take her) she was fine. She spent the evening with her friend, Izzy, and J had her home and in bed not too long past her normal bedtime. Thanks to an occasional business trip here and there she actually doesn’t freak out anymore when I’m gone for a day or two so it wasn’t a big deal when she didn’t see me that night or even the next morning.

We maintained her daycare routine in order to keep things as normal as possible – J dropped her off in the AM and picked her up at the regular time. Once she got home J would bring her into the room where I was camped out several times a day so she could at least see me but he suddenly became the sole provider of hugs, food, kisses, cups of milks, baths, books, and all the other things we both normally handle. I was either too out of it or too sore to do much for the first 3 days but she was always thrilled to see me when J brought her in for a while.

By the 4th day I was feeling a little better so I asked J to pile some pillows around me to make sure I didn’t get toddler tackled in the belly and to leave her with me for a little while so we could bond over some Sesa.me Street. She was thrilled to be able to lay in mama’s bed and watch TV since this is a rare treat for her. Thrilled, that is, until J left the room and all hell broke loose because she did not want a) J to leave and/or b) to be alone with me.

My heart sustained some permanent damage, I’m certain of it. She screamed so loud that J came running back upstairs to see what the problem was. I had him comfort her for a minute and then told him he had to leave so we could sort this out. She yelled some more, wept quietly once she figured out J wasn’t coming to save her, refused to let me touch or soothe her, and scooted as far away from me as she possibly could without falling off the bed. I tried really hard not to take any of this personally but this was the first time she’d flat out rejected me and it smarted a bit. Of course, I also had to worry that this might resurrect any latent abandonment issues and have a negative impact on all the work we’ve done to ensure that she develops a secure and confident attachment. While I think her attachment has been fantastic, there’s a tendency toward anxiety in her that I need to keep an eye on and manage and it scared me to death to see her reaction when J left the room. She was in anxiety overload and was struggling so very hard to control this situation.

Thank goodness for Elm.o, Steve Jobs, and whoever invented YouTube. Between the temptation of that little red monster and my web enabled cell phone I was able to coax her back over to my side of the bed and to forget for a little bit that Daddy left her to the evil, disappearing mama. A few more rounds of the lipdub version of “I Gotta Feeling” and she was putty in my hands.

Actually saying that I was putty in her hands would be way more accurate. I would have done almost anything to be back in her good graces even if it does involve annoying puppets and the Black Eyed Peas.

Sadly, I hear that the Candlelight Wedding Chapel is no longer in existence. Torn down, I’m sure, for yet another mega Vegas hotel.

However…we’ve managed to hang on, by the skin of our teeth sometimes to be sure, and hope to be going strong for another 14 (or 40) years.

Resident doctor came right away and agreed that I could leave soon but the order somehow didn’t get communicated to day nurse, henceforth to be known as Satan Nurse or SN for short.

SN clearly thought very highly of herself and her importance. I did not and she failed to understand that I was irritable and in pain since her method of administering pain medication was primarily to ignore me when I pushed the nurse call button. Seriously, she told me once that she was too busy. SN also decided to tell me that I would not be leaving until much later in the afternoon. Ummm, no. She sorted that out rather quickly after I set her straight. Convenient being on drugs, by the way. You can get by with a lot of bad behavior by using that excuse.

She did win one battle by making me attempt to eat breakfast although I did request a preemptive shot of anti-nausea meds first. The breakfast itself was rather horrid and I tried to talk J into eating some of it when he got there. He opted out. So did I.

I won the next skirmish by refusing to have my IV out until I got one last dose of the good stuff medicine before leaving and getting into a bouncy car for the ride home.

To make a long story short (I know – y’all are sighing with relief): J busted me out of there, brought me home,managed to get me upstairs, and put me to bed. At some point he went and filled all my prescriptions and proceeded to keep me drugged up and sleeping. Good thing J planned the entire week off to play nursemaid to me, Mr. Mom to Ava, and zookeeper to the menagerie.

Although I am a very easy sick person to take care of, if I do say so myself.  Just toss me some crackers and grape kool-aid in every so often and I’m happy.

The pain level at home wasn’t too bad but narcotics were definitely needed for several days. I also developed an immediate and intense longing for a full length body pillow and J kindly made an emergency trip out to procure one.

And Ava’s reaction to all this? Well, that’s a whole ‘nother post.

We waited for ages in the waiting room and again in the tiny cubby they stuff you into to wait to be carted back to surgery. Apparently they weren’t too worried about HIPAA violations back there ’cause I could tell you far too much information about the gentleman who was in the cubby next to mine – name, age, diagnosis, blood type, surgery, address, and more. I was there so long that J was getting ready to find someone since they’d obviously forgotten about me when my anesthesiologist showed up cracking bad jokes (something about him never having anyone wake up dead and then chortling like he didn’t tell this same joke to every single patient he has) and with an explanation that the surgery prior to mine ran longer than expected. I got the ‘these are all the things that can go wrong’ speech from both him and my surgeon but by this time I’m contemplating gnawing on the IV bag for nourishment since I was now at 14 hours and counting from last food or liquid consumption and I would have agreed to anything so they would stop talking and get started. Bad joke doc gave me drugs (which made me appreciate his jokes much more) and I happily waved J off to go nosh on some hospital food while I went under the fancy robot knives – albeit with an understanding that if the endo was too bad then they may have to do a regular abdominal hysterectomy. The surgery was estimated to take about 3 hours.

He did it in 2. Everything went so much smoother than he’d anticipated and he said I was a perfect candidate for the DaVinci assisted since it allowed him a magnified view of all the endo that was in there. He removed a large band of scar tissue, a number of adhesions (some of which had stuck my colon to the abdominal wall), and excised a ton of endo after he’d removed the uterus – most of this was found in the harder to reach places near the bladder which makes sense considering I’d just had surgery in April. He also removed my problematic right ovary but left the other one since it appeared to be unaffected and he knew how strongly I felt about keeping it if there was any way possible in order to avoid hormone replacement therapy. Oh yeah, and the cervix too. I couldn’t see any reason to keep it and after my (unfounded) scare last year with a questionable pap test I had no qualms about letting that go, too. Recovery room was a breeze once they brought me some ice chips and a couple of those super warm blankets and I was carted off to my room soon thereafter.

I had a private room (thank heavens) and I think J was already in there when I arrived. Or maybe not. What can I say? I was higher than a kite so my recall is a little foggy. I do know he had to track down my bag o’ stuff that had gone missing and he had the foresight to ferret me out some ginger ale before heading out to pick Ava up and take her to our friends’ house for the evening so he could come back and make sure I was good and settled for the night. Ava did fine with our friends – making a new best friend of their teenage daughter. Even though Ava is in daycare for about 6 hours a day we almost never leave her any other time so I was worried about this. For no reason, apparently.

J came back (with crackers – YAY!) and hung out for a couple of hours, most of which we spent celebrating the fact that I was alive by trying to figure out how to turn off the TV with the provided remote. I was convinced it was me (that drug thing again) but neither he or the evening nurse could make it work either. No matter, I had my iPhone with music, books, and J brought my netbook in case I felt like blog reading and commenting under the influence – which I would have except they had a net nanny type of program on their wireless and I couldn’t access anything I normally read…including my own. Who knew I was classed under objectionable content?

Other than the typical annoyances associated with a hospital stay (you know, where the nurse comes into the room 5 seconds after you finally fall asleep to wake you for a blood pressure or something) it wasn’t a bad experience. The (very good) pain medication was free flowing so pain never went above a 6-7 on the pain scale and my night nurse was an absolute angel except when she let my IV bag run dry and the alarms went off scaring the heck out of me. Seriously – an angel. It amazes me how much nurses do, all the while maintaining a pleasant and positive attitude, with so little recognition.

Still more later…

Most importantly, thanks to a somewhat devious friend who shall not be named, I’d recently gotten hooked on a vampire series clearly designed for an angsty pre-teen and/or a middle aged female audience, watched the first movie, and just HAD to see the second in the series before I was down and out (and therefore unable to get out at all for a while). Thankfully my in-laws are understanding sorts and didn’t mind much when I bailed out on them after dinner on Saturday night and headed out to meet said friend at the movies to drool over were-teenagers with abs to die for. Of course, it didn’t hurt that my absence meant the grandparents had their son and granddaughter all to themselves for a couple of hours (which is a treat, I’m sure, since it doesn’t happen all that often).

Movie Funny #1: I think there were 2 men in the audience that night. One of them was clearly on a date and the other was the long (and loud) suffering spouse who wasn’t about to let his wife forget that the next time was his turn to pick the movie. Movie Funny #2: Hearing all the middle aged women audibly gasp when the clearly jailbait actor takes his shirt off for the first time and then laugh self consciously when they realized what they were doing. Pathetic Movie Fact #1: It’s the first movie I’ve seen in the theater since well before Ava came home over 2 years ago.

So many, many things to do and not enough time.

Not to mention that it’s about this time that the doubts set in. Not about the surgery itself but about the fact that I am now nearly convinced that I will die in surgery and Ava will be left motherless again. (I get like this when I fly, too – every single time.) At this very late date I decide we need a new will (sorry – too late to do that) and want to discuss J’s next wife (and future mother to my child) with him. He, understandably, thinks that I am nuts and refuses to talk about it which makes me threaten to cancel the surgery completely (except by now I’m really looking forward to the 6 weeks off from work).

Oh yeah, and I had to go to the hospital over the weekend so they could rush the labwork through. Once I found my way to some closet they’re renovating but are currently using as a blood-sucking room the hospital vampire swooped in, drained half my blood, and then slapped a hospital ID bracelet on me before telling me I couldn’t take it off until my surgery on Monday. WTH? Now I’m stuck with a hospital bracelet with about 40 tabs noting my blood type and I’m heading out for a night out with my friend – not that we’re all that exciting or looking for action or anything but a hospital ID was not my accessory of choice.

Good times were had by all, despite my stress and paranoia. My mother-in-law came bearing much frozen food in the hopes that J and Ava would not be forced to subsist on canned pasta sauce (the sacrilege), she cooked us dinner (yum, sausages from NY) when she arrived, I got a night out with a cool friend (sans kids) AND I got accosted and robbed by Barnes and Noble on the way out of the mall. (That’s what I told J, anyway, to account for the lighter wallet and large bag of books I brought home.)

More Later…

The funny thing about endo is that it’s not very predictable. Some people can have the worst stage of the disease with no symptoms at all and others can experience the worst pain with only a slight case of endometriosis. It’s graded by stages, with I being the least invasive and IV being the worst. I’ve watched mine progress through the years from a Stage I (diagnosed around age 25) to the worst case of Stage IV that my surgeon from last year had ever seen. Fortunately I’ve been one of the lucky ones for most of my life and have not been sidelined with any major pain or other issues normally associated with endometriosis. That is, until the last couple of years. But honestly, even then it hasn’t been so bad. Mainly a low grade chronic pain that was easily treated with the magical Motrin so often prescribed by the military docs…except it was starting to get to the point that the Motrin wasn’t working so well any longer and the bigger guns had to be pulled out.

At my last lap in April ‘09 the military doctor I’d been seeing for eons (3 surgeries) finally mentioned the “h” word: Hysterectomy. Now you need to understand that I’d previously mentioned, even requested, a hysterectomy in the past but had been shot down over and over again due to the fact that I was so young, didn’t have children, blah blah blah. I found this insulting because they (several military docs) apparently believed that I wasn’t intelligent enough to know my own mind or have any real say in how this disease affecting MY body should be treated. Not to mention that I’ve known my whole life (well, since I was a teenager) that my kid(s) were in China and I never planned nor expected to have biological children. But I wasn’t ready last year because Ava had just turned 2 and I couldn’t fathom how I could handle her while recovering from that surgery. J was traveling quite a bit around this time and it just wasn’t do-able so I shelved the thought for a while.

Because the endo was sooooo bad the last time the doc put me on Synarel, which is a GnRH-a therapy, after surgery. This put me full square into menopause within a week of starting it…and I LOVED it. Very few migraines (compared to my normal 4-6 a month) and it was my first taste of NO pain, which made me realize how obnoxious that low grade, chronic pain really was. Unfortunately you can only take Synarel for 3-6 months as the side effects (bone loss and increased cholesterol amongst others) can be pretty nasty. But that pain free part? Sign me up because I was hooked. I finished the Synarel in August and the endo with associated pain was already coming back by the end of October.

But I was still pretty worried about the surgery itself and, more importantly, the recovery. Remember that toddler and all? So I needed to find the best and easiest way to do this which I already knew wouldn’t involve the military if I could help it. Since I’ve always maintained separate civilian health insurance I did some research, found the best surgeon in the area who utilized the DaVinci robotic assisted method, and made a phone call.

Except I couldn’t even get an appointment with him for nearly a year. I pled my case to the receptionist, who is also a fellow endo sufferer, and she back-doored me into a NP appointment who then referred me to the surgeon, scoring me an appointment in early December. And what a breath of fresh air he was.

I took all my records and formulated my arguments only to discover that I didn’t even really need them. He reviewed my records, did a physical exam, listened to me plead my case, and then agreed that a hysterectomy was certainly indicated based on all that he’d seen and heard from me. I told him that I wanted to do robotic assisted if at all possible (at this point his eyes lit up like a Christmas tree – apparently this is pretty cool to him when he gets to do it) and he simply asked me when I wanted to have it done.

“Mid-January, please.” I replied.

And that was it. I signed the paperwork, agreed on a January 14th surgery date, got my pre-op instructions, and pretty much went on my merry way. This made me happy since I could deal with the holiday stuff, celebrate our anniversary, and then go under the knife (or whatever the robot guy uses – I had a visual of laser beams shooting from his eyes but I’m pretty sure that’s just me being all sci-fi weird) before taking a few weeks to recover. The doc insists you commit to 4-6 weeks off, by the way, but I was convinced I’d be a superstar and would be totally recovered in 2 weeks or so.

All was planned well in advance: J was taking time off, the surgery was scheduled for early AM so we wouldn’t have to worry about finding someone to watch Ava, etc. Extra pajamas were purchased (in a larger size to account for the swelling) and everything was set…until I got the unexpected phone call that surgery was moved up to January 11th instead.

To be continued…

Please note that I’m back dating posts so this isn’t happening now. I’m all better (mostly) and am just now fleshing out my drafts and actually getting them posted. I blame Disney. I haven’t been blogging in the present since we got behind on that trip. Maybe someday I’ll be caught up.

When I asked her what on earth she was doing, she replied “Cleaning my toes, Mama.”

What could I do but laugh? She answered my question, didn’t she?

And then we had a chat about the appropriateness of putting our feet on the table…especially while eating. So far the message seems to have stuck, thank goodness.