When God hands you a lemon...

You know the rest of the saying. Suffice it to say that we're getting a little tired of lemonade around here. We love our little lemon though, and we're glad her second surgery is over and we're moving forward again. We should have known Laney might be needing two surgeries when the doctor told us this summer, "I've only had one kid where the first surgery didn't relocate the hip properly and we had to go in and do it again." Laney always picks the short side of the odds. If she keeps this up, she'll probably someday win the lottery, be over 6 feet tall, become a Rhodes scholar, make it big as an actor or singer, save the world, and have a dozen children of her own. But she probably wouldn't even be here if she didn't beat the odds all the time, so we're not complaining about that.
This surgery was not nearly as smooth as the last one, and probably gets us started in the Bad Parents of America Club, if we weren't already members. She was out of surgery at about 9am and was in a different position this time, very spread-eagle, almost in the splits with just a slight bending of the legs. She was not happy, and never really stopped screaming. Except when the nurse gave her 0.06mg of demerol, and then almost everything stopped, including her breathing. So we had to sit there for 1 and 1/2 hours regularly stimulating her chest to remind her to breath so her O2 levels would stay up. It brought us full circle back to our months in Neonatal Intensive Care. Ah, such wonderful memories.
Anyway, the demerol finally wore off and the screaming started again. We took her home at about 11am, probably to the delight of the recovery room who didn't have to listen to her screaming anymore. We thought she would calm down at home, and figured she was probably just scared again and maybe a bit more uncomfortable due to the new position she was in with the cast. We kept giving her tylenol every 3 hours, which has a bit of hydrocodone in it, and tried to calm her down and get her to sleep. By 5:30pm, she was still crying. I'm not kidding, she never really stopped crying. Even after the tylenol treatments, she would calm down and almost get to sleep, but after just a few seconds she would jerk herself awake and start screaming again. After a while we started to worry, even wondering whether she was giving herself little seizures due to her hysteria. We finally gave up and called the doctor, who said she was probably having muscle spasms and suggest we combine the tylenol with Motrin (ibuprofen) and see if that worked. By 8pm we had given up and the doctor sent us to the hospital, where they gave her some valium and a comfortable crib, where she finally got some rest. In hindsight, we probably should have called the doctor much earlier and taken her back to the hospital much earlier, which is where the Bad Parents membership comes in. We just thought she would finally calm down, but she just couldn't due to the muscle spasms. We've probably scarred her for life now. We feel scarred ourselves!
Angie spent the night with Laney and we took her home the next afternoon, hoping she hadn't picked up swine flu which is running through the hospital. However, even the little bit of valium she was getting was reducing her drive to breath, so we went home with an O2 and heart rate monitor, and quickly came to the conclusion that 1/4 doses of valium or less was all we could give her. Due to the stress of the whole situation, we decided we would just take the rest of her dose, and that has helped us out a lot. Wink, wink.
So we're now on day 4 post-surgery and she is doing much better, though she still isn't eating like she was before. But she's getting there. We go back on Wednesday for the MRI to check whether the hip is properly placed this time, and if not we'll be back for round 3, which will be a more invasive surgery. And we'll be drinking even more lemonade.