Lula & the Cyst

 12/28: Ben & I woke up at 3:00am.... something I've not done since I was an audio transcriptionist working midnight shifts for extra pay. Coffee was brewing & we had just enough time to sit and drink a cup before we got moving. We'd have to be quick, as we needed to wake up Lula and be out the door by 4am. The day before, we packed out bags and laid out pillows and blankets by the door. Maggie was at her grandparents' house for the week, so there was no dog to walk. We had a cup of coffee, got dressed & with anxious stomachs, woke up Lula for our early morning ride to Atlanta.

We thought "Oh, she'll sleep the whole way", but she was excited for our road trip and babbled the whole way there, pointing at the big trucks on the road and all the lights once we got close to the city. The sun hadn't even considered coming up yet; neither had the Atlanta commuters, so we reached our destination with little traffic or scurry. My nerves were unusually calm, but Ben was stressing (with good reason - our precious little baby would soon be intubated, sedated, and cut into). 

When we arrived at Children's Hospital of Atlanta, which is connected to the Emory Hospital campus, memories of saying goodbye to Ben's grandma (who Lula is named after) years ago at Emory flooded our minds. Hospitals are never a fun place to be, especially with sad memories tied to them. We checked in right on time at 5:45 am and were taken back into our surgical prep room. Our emotions were all over the place: excitement to have this cyst removed, which had been a concern for nearly 9 months; worry for our child & her recovery; faith that the procedure would go as planned with no unexpected side effects. Lula, unaware of what was happening, was in a great, happy mood and socialized with every nurse & practitioner that entered our room. She reminds us constantly what a wonderful person she is. She truly brings light and happiness to everyone she encounters. When it was time for the "silly juice", a medicine called Versed to calm her down prior to being sedated, the silliness took effect, all right. She was pointing at the lights above us & giggling at it, and chatting up a storm. I held her tight, knowing that in a few minutes she would be whisked away for sedation & surgery for the cyst on her neck. My nerves started to nauseate me as the time ticked away. Before we knew it, tearful goodbyes had been said and many kisses were planted, as the thought in both my & Ben's mind was, "Please, don't let this be the last time we see you." Although we knew her surgery was completely routine & low risk, it's hard not to think of the worst. When she left the room, Ben and I just embraced each other and cried for a few minutes.  

This is the only picture we have ever taken of her cyst. 

Dressed down & waiting for the silly juice

Running my hands through her silky hair brought me so much as peace as we waited for surgery to begin.

Drunk off silly juice

"Trippin' balls"

We leaned on one another heavily to get through this. Neither one could do this without the other.

We waited around for the phone call to our room that Lula was sedated and surgery would soon be underway. After about 30 minutes, the call came that our little girl was entertaining all of the surgical staff with her laughter and questions about the medical equipment in the room. This will always be the story of her first "trip" and let it be known, it was a good one. One of our nurses let us know that we would have at least an hour before we would get another update, so we should go take a break and find some breakfast. So we went down to the cafeteria and got some croissants & juice, and went back to the car for some peace & comfort of not being in the hospital for a few minutes. So we sat in the car & ate a few bites of food before the anxiety kicked in and took away our hunger. After about 30 minutes, we decided to head back to the room and wait to hear back from the hospital staff. By 9am, we heard that surgery was complete, everything went well, and that Lula was slowly waking up. The surgeon had to cut within 2mm of her carotid artery and it turned out the cyst was more complicated than what we knew based on the MRI. The surgeon ended up removing about twice the amount of skin as he anticipated. We were directed to the hospital room where we would stay overnight and waited, and waited some more, for our sweet baby to arrive.  After what felt like hours, she was wheeled into the room, clearly still "out of it" from the anesthesia. We loved on her..... oh, we loved on her so much. She couldn't quite sit up on her own, but was telling us all about everything. She had moments of pain where she would swing her head around in a panic and cry. For a while, we took turns just holding her & letting her watch TV. The first few hours of her recovery, she was very sleepy and slow to move, so snuggly and sweet.... but after a while, the anesthesia started wearing off & she became restless and sometimes inconsolable. The IV on her tiny hand and the humongous ball of gauze on her neck drove her crazy, and it was a big job to keep her attention diverted away from picking at them. The more she awoke, the more she tried pulling off her gauze and IV. The coming hours proved to become more & more difficult, as her awareness to her incision increased.  Ben & I took turns holding her throughout the day, but it was a fight to get her to stay still and understand she could not get down to play on the floor because of the pulse oxometer on her toe (which drove her insane). As luck would have it, anytime Ben would leave the room for anything, she would go into hysterics and I struggled to appease her. Lula eventually fell asleep at one point late in the afternoon, but did not sleep for longer than an hour. Ben & I should have napped too -- we didn't foresee the kind of night we had ahead of us with frequent check-ins and constant monitor beeping -- but instead we enjoyed watching her sleep. She woke up after no time, with plenty of energy but no outlet to use it up. At some point after that, I had a mild panic attack and just cried, cried, and cried some more. I went out to the car for a few minutes to settle myself from this annoyingly helpful hospital (and I mean that in the best way possible). I wanted so badly for her to get the rest she needed to recover. I needed rest to recover, too. My brain had been awake for almost 24 hours and it was shutting down. 

Pacing the floors, waiting for our Lula

So happy to have her back in my arms. All the kisses. 

Still feeling a little sedated, a couple of hours post-op

Comfy in Daddy's lap

When I figured out I could climb in the bed with her, that made things a little easier

Finally asleep! Even if just for an hour. 

Yummy peanut butter crackers 

Gauze & drain tube (I had no idea a drain tube was basically just a drinking straw)

Almost ready for night-night time

As the long day came to a close, we were hopeful that Lula would finally get some sleep, but it wouldn't come until late due to her napping so late in the afternoon. Starting at 7pm, we tried to get into our normal night time routine as best we could. Around 9pm, a nurse came in to give Lula some Motrin and she finally went to sleep within 5 minutes. We were astounded. The nurse reminded us that someone else would be back at 10pm, and then another nurse would be by at midnight. Ben laid on the couch and I laid on the thin hospital mattress on the floor. The nurse held to her word and was back an hour later to check Lula's temperature, then another nurse at midnight. I wanted to cry when I heard the door open at midnight because neither Ben nor I had fallen asleep yet, and I was scared the nurse would wake Lula to take her temperature, and I literally could not handle another waking hour of her being inconsolable, while she's simultaneously hyper & exhausted. Thankfully, our little one slept all night long -- that is, until our nurse Ginger entered the room at what we thought was 3:15am (Ben had looked at the clock wrong and we got so pissed when Lula woke up and we thought it was too early, but it was actually 5:15am... not so bad). Ginger asks, "Hey mom, can you tell me what all Lula has had to drink? No one has charted any drinks since you've been here." I bit my tongue as I felt anger and frustration creeping up from my stomach to my mouth. I said, "We've been here since 6am yesterday.... and you want me to remember everything she's had to drink since then?". I think Ginger could sense my sleepless bitchiness and backed away, assuring me it was fine. I'd had enough. My next question: "How soon will Dr. Evans be here to discharge us?"

Life has a funny way of humbling you when you need it the most. Yes, we were sleep deprived for nearly 24 hours, uncomfortable & anxious about Lula's incision. But every so often, we would hear a code blue on the intercom (remember, this is a children's hospital) and it reminded us of all we had to be thankful for. The child on a ventilator across the hall from us humbled us to the point we would just sit and cry at how cruel the world can be, and how little our worries are compared to the heavy suffering others are going through. 

Dr. Evans came by early to look at the incision -- after we discovered Lula had pulled her drain tube out overnight. Which I felt like a huge failure about.... the nurses had told us over and over to keep an eye on her to prevent her from doing this, but I had to sleep....I could not sit up all night watching her, as much as I wanted to. I'd teetered on the edge of losing my cool all day and needed to sleep at night. Dr. Evans reassured us that it was no big deal and that she would be fine, especially considering the tube was due to be removed that same morning anyway. Dr. Evans & our nurses said we'd be discharged by 10am at the latest, which turned out to be about noon 'hospital time'. To rub salt in our wounds, housekeeping came by to clean out our room around 11am and said "You guys are still here? I thought you'd be discharged by now"... Yeah, us too. But we remembered how our frustrations got the best of us the day before, so we put good efforts into being patient & knowing that this ordeal would not last much longer. Eventually, Lula's Little Red Wagon chariot arrived and our nurse escorted us back to our car. Lula conducted her own parade as she waved, said "bye bye!" and blew kisses to everyone on our way out. She was so proud of herself, and so were we! This mean, ugly cyst that had bringing us worry since March 2020 was no more. The surgery we'd dreaded for months had come & gone. The overnight hospital stay that we wanted so badly to avoid was over, and it was time to go back home.   

The next morning, after pulling out her drain tube.... so ready to go home! 

Time to go! 

For some reason, Lula has even more kind/loving than normal post-op! Must be the drugs. 

Incision about 3 days post-op

She was back to her normal happy self in no time. 

Finally, our Maggie is back home after staying with her Yaya & Papa for the week. 

In the days to come, Mama & Papa Bear were hypervigilant to Baby Bear's wound and her obsession with touching it. We would say "No touchy!" and she would shake her head "No, no, no" as if she was disciplining herself. Our first morning at home, she removed all of her butterfly bandages, exposing the raw incision, which sent us in a panic & a resulting phone call to Dr. Evans, who assured us it was totally fine to air out so long as she wasn't digging in the wound. Taking antibiotics was a hurdle for us, as she didn't get the yummy pink bubblegum flavored stuff we enjoyed as kids - her Augmentin smelled like a rotten nursing home & nasty chemicals. We are on day 9 today, with one day left, and she is finally started to not fight it as much. After a week at home recovering during Christmas break, she returned to daycare yesterday and had a good day. While the scar will always remind us of this event and all the terrible things that happened in the year 2020, it will also be a story of how we overcame and healed. May 2021 bring us all peace, happiness, and good health as we continue (well, at least some of us.... here's a big eye roll/middle finger to all the anti-science/"I get my science from Facebook posts" folks out there) to fight against the COVID pandemic and come to normalcy once again.