my little trooper...

Whew!  What a week!  Can we please sign up for a little "normal and boring" before any more excitement around here?

Coming home with all of these cards on Thursday was such an encouragement to Caroline as she nervously anticipated her surgery on Friday.

She was fairly calm and good natured the morning of!  We had to be AT the hospital at 5:15AM.

In God's goodness to us, one of the nurses was a mom of Caroline's school friend!  I think seeing a familiar face was calming to Caroline.... as was the chill pill they gave her, ha ha...

Pretty cool to take a ride in a moving bed, eh?

A little screen time helped keep her mind distracted.

And this girl was AMAZING for the IV!  Not a tear, not a whimper.  So proud of her.

The hardest part for all of us was the moment we had to say goodbye.  She was so afraid.  It was gut-wrenching to send her off alone to surgery.  She seemed too young.

Even though it only took an hour or so to insert three pins into her bones, it felt like an ETERNITY to this worried mom and dad!  Finally her surgeon came and told us everything had gone well, though it was a finicky procedure the way the bone had been broken.  (well, of course, because when does anything normal happen in this family?!)

We had to wait even longer to see her after talking to the doctor, and I was about to go crazy.  Minor surgery is never minor when it's your child.   When we did get to see her, she was slumped over in her hospital bed, wrapped up in blankets (including a blanket around her little bald head!) being wheeled onto the elevator.

She was crying, saying how much it hurt.  Oh, it broke my heart to see her like that.  I encouraged her to close her eyes and rest, and she didn't want to do that.  It wasn't until they got her into the recovery room and dosed up on more pain meds that she began resting peacefully.
 

 And then, after an hour of rest, she was well enough to take the wheelchair ride to the car and head home!

Way to go, Caroline!  You did it, girl!!

(And PRAISE GOD for the nurse who happened to hand me a puke bag on the way out of the door "just in case..."!!)

Jameson happy to see sister home!

But besides the puking, Caroline's recovery was pretty smooth!  She woke up the next day and said, "I feel better!"  You could hardly tell she'd been in surgery the day before.

So we've made it through the worst.  Now we've got another temporary cast while we wait another two weeks for the bones to heal. Pins will come out at our follow up appointment (no sedation, just pliers.... gulp!), and she'll get some type of real cast.  (She's already got her hopes on hot pink.)

I can't say enough how grateful I am for everyone who helped--- for those of you all over the country who prayed for us, for those who watched Jameson throughout the week, for those who brought a meal, for those who texted and called and sent cards and goodies, for those who "showed up" and those who loved us well.  Thank you and we love you all!