After a few long days we are finally home with our puffy little girl. Tuesday morning Eden and I showed up at the hospital at 9:30 am. The day was spent getting our room and then waiting and waiting and waiting. We were visited by nurses, an anesthesiologist, doctors and finally Chad. Eden had some trouble getting her naps in with all the new things and the many interruptions but we made it to the end of the day alright. Chad and I watched a movie out on the patio (thank goodness for the beautiful weather). I stayed the night with Eden and Chad went home to get some good rest and get in contact with family.

Eden had her last meal at 7:30 am and the prep for surgery began. It was only her last meal for a few hours! Even though we kept talking about how she was going to be put down, we really meant only a temporary sleep. At about 11:30 she was given a relaxant. By the time I got back from the bathroom she was already acting loopy and looking glazed over.  Everything she did was in slow motion. She was happy and definitely relaxed–it was funny and cute.  At noon we went down to the operation area. Chad accompanied Eden into to operating room where she was given some gas and fell asleep. He was then escorted out to where I was waiting. I would have loved to stay to watch, but the surgeon had serious objections.

We had a mini date for the next two hours. We walked down to Lake Zurich, ate kebabs and talked about all the craziness that has been going on with Chad’s job (another long story). We ate ice cream and walked back up to the hospital. As soon as we reached our floor we ran into the doctor. She told us everything went great and Eden was being moved to recovery. Just a few minutes later they took us down to be there when she woke up. 

Poor little Eden looked completely wasted. She was all hot and puffy. She seemed to wake up as soon as we arrived. She only woke up from the pain though. They gave her some more pain killers which took effect almost immediately.  She fell back asleep and we waited with her. She stirred a few more times and was just miserable. She was so wasted she didn’t even cry . She just whimpered. Thankfully within the hour she was starting to crawl around and was looking as though she was starting to feel much better. She slept on and off for the rest of the afternoon. By that time the worst anticipation was over. It’s a relief to have a successful surgery behind you. Finally she was able to eat and drink something around 7:00 pm. We played on the floor for awhile and she seemed MUCH happier by the time I left for my night at home.

Today was just long and boring, and waiting. The hospital room started to look like a cell. Eden had to wear an IV all day. She had one hand all bound up, looking like HellBoy, to keep the needle in place. She didn’t let that stop her though. She was crawling around and climbing all over everything. The doctors took their sweet time in releasing us. They were short-staffed today because of the holiday. It was understandable–just annoying. Home feels sooo good. We’d rather be at home working instead of at the hospital resting.

We had a nice weekend together. Aren’t weekends wonderful? We got a lot done on Saturday, including packing some boxes, scanning in tons of photos, throwing away junk, and buying our final flights back to the States. So the countdown begins until July 1st.

Chad is good to me every day. So for Mother’s Day he was good to me again. We had a nice relaxing day. I got to watch a movie while Eden was awake! Chad made me chocolate angel food cake. He even got Eden to mark a piece of paper up with crayons for our moms.

We are really blessed to know some wonderful women. They are talented. They are great examples of goodness, sacrifice and love. They are patient and have incredible strength. They are always learning. They pay so much attention to the individuality of all their family members. We are the lucky ones who get to call them Mom. Thanks Idaho Mom and Seattle Mom for all you have done for us and continue to do. We love you!

Eden will be going  to the Kinderspital on Tuesday May 19th at 9:30 am for surgery preparation–so long as she doesn’t get sick and the hospital doesn’t have a surge of emergency cases to deal with. That is good news, right? Her little lump is not an emergency case!

I’ll stay the night with her and the surgery will be sometime the next day May 20th. We will stay one more night for obervation. What a long few days! Chad has the 21st off for Ascension Day and then we have a long weekend. Hooray for Catholic holidays. I suppose we’ll be staying home for the time off again since Eden will be post-op! We will probably need the time at home. But we also only have a few weekends left to travel around Europe.