November 19, 2014 ~ My One Year Blog Anniversary

November 19, 2014 ~ Marked the one year blog anniversary for my daughter, Raeya. It has been over a year since she has begun her journey to see the world again. It has been such a wonderful transformation for her! It has been a very long year full of surprises, disappointment, and overcoming obstacles. She has come so far and with just her second transplant only a few days ago...our journey is still not over.

This trip was incredibly stressful with myself being eight and a half months pregnant, and a daughter who was nervous and not so crazy about traveling anymore. Our last trip to Westchester Hospital had not been a pleasant one for her. Unfortunately when she went to have her stitches removed from her right eye, the anesthesiologist was anything but patient and forced the oxygen mask onto her face. My daughter fell asleep crying and woke up afterwards in a panic crying. It took us a half hour to calm her down and to trust us that nothing else would be done to her. 


Children always have a way of knowing when something is going to happen. With many visitors stopping by our house two days before we had to leave, I could tell she sensed something was not right. She knew that we were going on another one of our field trips. 
Raeya was just not herself the whole week before we left. She was easily aggitated and moody. Very unlike the happy go lucky little girl that we knew.  The episode before has bothered her and she was afraid it was going to happen again. Our ride down was just as unpleasant as she was unhappy to be traveling and more so that her little brother was not with us. 

 

 We did not tell her until we arrived at the hotel in Hawthorne that the next day she would be unable to eat, and that she would once again have to have surgery except for on her left eye this time. We were met with a terrible force of tantrum and tears. She was very angry at us the next morning when she couldn't eat anything.  This response was probably well deserved since we hadn't explained it to her ahead of time.  It was wrong of us to have waited to tell her but we were afraid that if she knew way ahead of time what was going to happen her attitude would have been much worse than what we had already seen. 

She wasn't scheduled to be at the hospital till 11:00 am, and for surgery at 1:00 p.m. We were hoping to not have a repeat of her first surgery and have her not go in until 5:00 p.m. 


All morning we were asked..."Please don't let them put the mask on me!". It was all that she could think about.


It takes just one moment to leave a lasting impression on a child...
it takes many more times to reteach them that there is nothing going to harm them.


We were grateful when we saw that her anesthesiologist would be "Moses". The same one she had for her first cornea transplant.   We explained to him her concern and how difficult the last procedure under anesthesia had been for her. He listened and acknowledged our concern, and hers and spoke directly to her about what was going to happen.  I was also grateful that it was my husband who had taken her into the operating room to witness just how hard it is to let her fall asleep. 

"Mom! He wrote on my face!"

No matter what the anesthesiologist did to help ease her fear, it just wasn't enough to get rid of the memory of the mask being forced on her face. My husband had to help hold her down on the table while Dr. Moses carefully placed the gas mask over her face to help her go to sleep. Chad said that it was over quickly but felt it had lasted forever. Its hard to watch your child cry and scream and be a part of the reason its happening. 
The procedure lasted three hours, an extremely long three hours....

We  met her in the recovery room where she was slowly waking up, whimpering.   She was quite groggy and unaware of her surroundings.  She kept whispering "mommy"... it just made my heart melt.  It was a joy and a suffering to finally have her second transplant done, but we also had to watch her be uncomfortable and unhappy in the moment.

She had made it through her second transplant.  

What a relief

We still have (hopefully) one more procedure ahead of us. She will have her stitches removed soon; another procedure under general anesthesia. Another day of torture. I hope that this time we can prepare her ahead of time. I hope that time time is her last time. I hope that she will never have to go through this ever again.