This Monday Gabbie finally went for her scheduled MRI. It has been a difficult process to navigate the bureaucracy of both Shriner's and Kaiser to finally have it scheduled for 1 month after the consultation, not within 1 to 2 weeks as requested by the doctor. But it is done now and it was a very scary process. First because babies need to be under general anesthesia for the procedure, because they need to be completely still. Well, the thought of having our 8 month old under general anesthesia was easy to swallow, but we knew that we were doing it for a good cause, she really needed it. But we had no idea that they would just take her away from us right there at the waiting room, and would only call us back when everything was done. When my son needed a CT scan years ago, he was around 6 years old, and I was with him through most of it. I was there when they put the IV on his hand, when he started to feel groggy, and then they took him in for the scan. But apparently with babies, they just take them. Maybe because parents are usually not the most helpful creatures when it comes to their babies and medical procedures... but we were expecting to be by her through most of it. No, we had her taken away still smiling at us, and then 1 hour and 40 minutes later they called us back to go to the recovery room with her. Those were the worse 100 minutes since she was born. Every beep or every announcement for all the different "codes" they use, you think it is about your kid. We would hear "Emergency, code 27, operating room", and we would think it was her. We would hear "Code 4, building 1" and we would think it was her, even though we had no idea if we were in building 1".
So, after the wait we finally see her, and she has all this wires and tubes, and she immediately starts to wake up. She is so cute. She was trying to open her eyes, she saw me, and was trying to smile and say "na-na", which seems to be her favorite thing to say, and I like to believe it refers to me. She was a trooper! Never cried, not even when she was taken from us into a cold room full of people she had never seen before. No crying when she woke up either. Just smiles. She was trying to roll over as soon as she opened her eyes, and it was funny to watch the nurse try to disconnect all wires that she was getting tangled in, and then Gabbie removed the oxygen tubes from her nose herself. She was determined to be free from all that stuff. Before she could do any more "damage", the nurse picked her up and gave her to me.
She was so sweet, every time she looked at me, she tried a smile. The nurse then gave me a bottle of water to give her, and then apple juice. She drank them really fast, she was hungry, not being able to eat since the previous day. Then it was already time to go home. She slept half the time, and was a little nauseated when we were home that afternoon. But I think the only bad thing that she really remembers from the whole experience was removing the earrings (which can be very difficult if you never removed them before) and then putting them back on! LOL Now every time that I touch her ears, she looks at me like "you are not doing that again, are you?".So now we wait again. Images are ready, Kaiser was actually very fast in getting a CD ready for me. We have an appointment next week at Shriner's and we will see what our next steps are. Keep your fingers crossed for us and of course your prayers are always welcome!
