Anabelle's Recovery

It has been a week today since Anabelle's surgery. The doctor said that it would take three weeks before she would be completely healed. I have been off of work since last Wednesday and will be going back to work on Monday, so it has been really nice being home with the kids. After having a week and a half off, I'm not going to want to go back!

Her recovery is going great! There were days where she would just be bouncing off the walls and other days that she would just be sleeping all day. When she tries to clear her throat, she has a really hard time because she doesn't want to cough too hard in fear of hurting her throat, so that has been the biggest obstacle during her recovery. A couple of times she has come close to vomitting it up. Another thing that has begun is bad breath from the healing process. In fact, she just came up to me and told me that Brady said something stinks, and she told me that maybe her breath is what Brady is saying is stinky. :( I told her that it is okay and that it will go away in a couple of days.

Her voice has also changed for the time being. It is a little higher pitched and sounds a bit muffled. She has complained of neck pain, which is another side effect of the surgery that should go away with the healing process.

She has been on two medications...one is Tylenol with codeine that is to be taken every four to six hours as needed to tolerate the pain and the other one is Amoxicillin for 10 days, twice a day. She is starting to not take as much Tylenol as she had been because I think the pain is starting to subside a little bit, which is good.

Her diet the first couple of days consisted of fluids, popsicles, "kids yogurt", jello and pudding. A few days after the surgery she wanted a chip really bad after seeing them on our dinner plates. I told her that she couldn't have one yet because it would hurt her throat. She kept on begging and begging, so I caved. I let her have one of my mom's chips. I told her to chew it up in a bunch of tiny pieces. As soon as she put the chip in her mouth and began to chew, she smiled the biggest smile. It was true happiness! You should have seen it. My mom and I just laughed hysterically! But that wasn't even the funniest part. As soon as she ate the chip, she sighed the biggest sigh of relief..."Ahhhhhh". We laughed harder than we did when she put on her smile. She was just so darn happy to get some real food! I will never forget that! It was the funniest thing!

She has done MUCH MUCH better than I had anticipated! I am just so glad that the surgery is over and that she is doing so great!

She has been such a little trooper!