Avery's Adventure: Dental Surgery, Christmas and 2 hospital admissions

So much has happened in the past few weeks. I don't even know where to begin.

I ended up buying 25 books, wrapping them and Avery opened one each day of December, leading up to Christmas. I saw the idea on Pinterest and I thought it was really cute. It was neat to read a new book each night. I should have thought about this more thoroughly and just got them from the library because we don't really have room for more stuff in our house but it was still fun.

On December 17, I went to Avery's school and got to help make gingerbread houses. Santa ended up coming to visit the kids. Avery was not a fan of him, which was to be expected. She covered her eyes and did not want her picture taken.

On December 18, Avery got to participate in her first Christmas program at daycare. The previous years we had pulled her out of daycare because she kept getting sick. The kids in her grade rang bells and sang a song but Avery just stood there and looked cute..hey, at least she didn't cover her face! lol.

On Monday, December 21, I received a call saying there had been a cancellation and that Avery was going to have her dental surgery the next day. It all happened so quickly.

Tuesday 12/22- Avery had dental surgery at UH. We got paged by the doctor a few minutes after she went back for surgery which made us very nervous. The doctor said they were having a really hard time intubating her and that he mouth didn't open very far so it was going to be very difficult to do surgery. Once she was intubated and had her xray, we got paged again and the dentist told us her plan. Avery ended up having teeth pulled, 6 teeth capped, 3 baby root canals and 2 fillings. Four of the teeth she had pulled were here upper middle teeth so she looks a bit like Dracula/a vampire but still super cute.

The dentist talked with us afterwards and was just going to send her home on motrin and tylenol. We demanded she get something stronger. I didn't want to be stuck on Christmas Eve/Christmas with a baby screaming in pain and not being able to reach anyone because it was a holiday. The doctor finally agreed to prescribe her oxycodone every 6 hours. The surgery was supposed to have been an outpatient procedure but in recovery, Avery's oxygen level wasn’t stable (once dipped to 66 but she brought herself back up) so they decided to keep her overnight to make sure oxygen was ok.

Avery had a bad time in recovery. She started screaming around 4pm and had a lot of blood coming out of her mouth. Both Tim and my shirt was covered in blood. We asked them for pain meds for her and they said she couldn't have anything until 6 pm. Around 5:30 we were transferred to a floor at Rainbow Babies and Children's hospital. It was then 6:05 and I notified them that she was due for pain meds because she still hadn't stopped screaming since we were sitting in recovery with her. We were told they couldn't give her anything because they didn't know which doctor was responsible for her. It was then 6:45 and Avery was still screaming and UH was still clueless about what was going on. I called and left a message for the dentist and explained that nobody knew what the hell they were doing. Finally, Tim and I decided to give her some of the oxycodone that she was prescribed to take home. We couldn't stand to see her in pain anymore. I didn't care what they said at that point. She didn't deserve to be in pain because no one seemed to know what they were doing. The dentist called back and apologized and said they shouldn't have taken her to the floor if they didn't agree to have her as a patient. She did apologize again. I am still not sure whose fault it was but we are contemplating writing a letter to complain. If we do write the letter, I don't want anything to happen besides possibly helping to prevent it from happening to another child.

Avery's oxygen level had stabilized but on Wednesday 12/23 ahe had been screaming and flailing the whole day, so much that it was hard to hold onto her. Probably one of the worst days in the hospital ever. She was inconsolable. She was having issues with constipation for about 4-5 days before the surgery and we told them that so they gave her a suppository and nothing happened. Then they gave her an enema and nothing happened. They did an xray of her stomach and found she was full of poop. A few hours later she had three bouts of leakage (not really diarrhea) and they seemed happy with that. They then gave her fluids so she wasn’t dehydrated.

On Thursday 12/24 she was acting ok and was discharged in the afternoon from UH. She slept a little on the way home and then when she woke up, she started kicking and screaming and flailing again. We were thankful to be home but Avery still seemed to be in a lot of pain. After multiple hours of this, she finally fell asleep.

Friday 12/25- She slept from about 1:30am-10:00am Christmas morning and we were happy with that but then she woke up, she started screaming and flailing again. We didn’t know if it was her teeth, her stomach, etc. We took her to Tim’s parents and my parents to see if seeing cousins, etc would be a good distraction for her and she still screamed and kicked and hit. My mom, who is a RN, agreed that we should take her to the ER. We arrived at Fairview ER around 8pm and they did a stomach xray and enema and she still was screaming and kicking 5 hours later. They were pretty sure she was constipated but they didn't know for sure if that is what was wrong with her. They refused to give her anything up until this point to calm her down even though Tim and I asked multiple times. We were having difficulty controlling her and scared she would fling herself off the bed, even while we tried to hold her down. Finally, they decided to transport her to main campus and that’s when they gave her morphine and she calmed right down.

We got to main campus around 2:00am and she slept pretty good due to the morphine.

On Saturday 12/26, they did a stomach xray and there was still poop in there but not as much as they thought there would be. They decided to stick a NG tube down her nose and give her magnesium citrate to clean her out. After about 4 diapers, she finally stopped screaming and kicking and was starting to act normal again. Her IV was infiltrated so they pulled it out and started giving her some liquids through the NG tube since she wasn’t really eating or drinking by mouth. Avery was sick of the NG tube and ended up pulling it out in the middle of the night early Sunday morning.

We were worried about her being dehydrated and not wanting to eat/drink anything. She ended up eating part of a popsicle and started drinking a bottle and eating some sherbet so they decided she could go home. She acted pretty good Sunday but we were still giving her Motrin around every 6 hours per the main campus doctor instructions. She is also prescribed Miralax twice a day to try to keep her regular. She finally was acting normal on Sunday night and got to play with all of her new toys from Santa and family members.

This was Avery's 6th surgery and probably the worst so far due to the constipation issues. We have never seen her act like this before. My niece was scared of her because she seemed possessed. I am so happy and relieved that she seems to be doing well and back to her normal, sweet and silly self.

Daddy hugs are the best