Hi everyone
Not sure if anyone is still coming over here to check our news. I don’t blame you
if you aren’t. I have been quiet for a year!
Last post I wrote was two days before S. surgery. If you are a parent of a child you can imagine, or you already know, how stressful this is. Not just the day of it
but the whole process of preparing the child for it to trying to keep yourself
calm when you want to cry.
So the surgery happened and it went well. A small cyst was removed from S. bladder
and the results of the biopsy came back in two (full of nerves) weeks. It
wasn’t anything dangerous.
It was a super stressful time so as soon as it was over, I just wanted to forget
about.. not write about it here.
But today I realized it’s important to share how we got ready for it and to praise
my brave girl for going through it.
This is how we did it.
I told S. that she will have to go to hospital for a day, a week before the date.
I have learned from past experiences that I can’t tell her about it too early
because I know it will give her too much time to stressed out about it. Also I
learned the hard way that I need to share with S. a plan of what will happen. To
be honest I think it doesn’t matter if you a child or you are an adult – we all
feel more safe and calm when we know what’s ahead of us, we are all nervous
when we don’t know what to expect in any situation……and surgery is one of the
extreme ones.
I have written a clear plan of what will happen. As detailed as possible, so the
child will know why and is going to happen next.
To be exact we had two plans. First for the day before because the times we live
in now, require a COVID test. So on that plan we had:
- Wake up, get dressed
- Have breakfast
- Brush teeth
- Travel to hospital
- Do the COVID test (tickle in nose)
- Buy some donuts
- Go home and watch a movie and snuggle
- Order a toy to get after surgery
You might ask why our plan is so important to us. For two reasons. First the child who knows what’s coming is more calm. Aren’t we all in fact? I’m 40 and I feel more comfortable knowing what’s ahead of me, especially in a new situation. Secondly I know from the past it’s easier to do the hard bit when you know something nice is awaiting straight after. And this time I really felt it. On the day everything went smoothly until we went into nurses room and she wanted to take a swab from S. Nose. Suddenly S. refused. I stayed calm and instead if of getting angry or frustrated and saying things like “you have to do this!” I pulled out the plan and let S. cross with off with a crayon what we already did. And then I said “look it’s only a tickle to do now and then we have all the fun stuff, so let’s try do it fast and enjoy the rest of the day”. And you know what happened? S. allowed the nurse to do the test and then she crossed it of the list and whispered to me “can we go now and have some donuts?”. And that’s what we did. I couldn’t be more proud of my brave girl.
Obviously it was a small victory and the next day was even more stressful but at this stage I knew she going to be fine. That we will manage.
And there was a plan for it as well. Similar to previous day:
- Wake up, get dressed, NO BREAKFAST
- Travel to hospital
- Check in hospital
- Observations – weight, temperature, pulse
- Chat with nurse and doctors
- Take meds
- Go to sleep
- WAKE UP, observations
- Go back to Mama
- Observations
- Eat toast
- Go back home to have ICE CREAM, Cuddles , watch DVD and NEW DOLL
You can see the picture of it below, crossed off already as I didn’t take picture of it before, but you can see, we crossed it all as it we did it.
