The trip to Hobart is usually about a four hour drive, but with both girls we knew we needed to allow some extra time. We packed the car the night before, so all we had to do Friday morning was feed the girls and we could leave. Drew cooked up a huge breaky for himself and Sophie and we were off. 7am. Way to early for my liking with only one coffee in me!
The drive was fairly uneventful. Both Sophie and Drew were both quite excited to see the Targa cars driving past, and Ellie slept. We had to make a quick pitt stop to feed Ellie about two hours in, and Soph got a chance to stretch her legs. She was such a good girl in the car, she never complained once.
We got in to Hobart at around 12pm, and Ellie needed another feed so we found a McDonalds and had a coffee while she had her bottle. The travel had messed with her routine and she wasn't drinking or sleeping as well as usual so she was quite cranky already.
The pre-op appointment at the specialists clinics in the Wellington building was at 1.15pm, so after Ellie's bottle we headed to that. I knew that these appointments can take a while because you need to see so many different people, and I wasn't wrong.
First up was plastics. It wasn't Frank that we saw but one of his junior doctors, which surprised me. I thought he'd need to see her before the opperation to see what her lip looks like now (he last saw her in Feburary) to work out a plan. The young doctor didn't really have anything to tell us, just that we needed to take her across to paediatric outpaitents once we were done to have a mouth swab done. He gave us the form and back to the waiting room we went.
Next up was a nurse, who was a cow. I swear, if the nurses on the ward or even in recovery are like that I am going to lose it. She weighed Ellie fully dressed and with a wet bum, and then tried to find out when we would be going in on Monday. She knew it was afternoon but couldn't get a time right then.
I asked her about fasting and she was very snappy. "didn't the doctor give you a pamphlet?" I'm sorry love, I happen to like to double check these things. Because it's an afternoon surgery Ellie is allowed to have a bottle before 7am Monday morning, and nothing after that. I can give her water until 11am if she will drink it. I said that I was a bit anxious about that because with her reflux Ellie needs to feed every 3 hours or her symptoms get worse, and she gave me this lecture about how they've had plenty of reflux babies in before us.
That's the number one thing that pisses me off about people like her: they know my baby better than me after only 2 minutes. She's lucky I had Sophie there or I would have told her where to stick her condicending attitude. As it was I burst in to tears as soon as I was back in the waiting room.
By this point we had been there for over an hour and both girls were getting very crabby. Ellie was overtired and hungry and Soph was sick of having to sit still for so long. The constant screaming from them was doing my head in and making me feel even worse.
The last person we needed to see was the anethitist. She explained that because of the reflux they would give ellie the drugs through a drip in her hand rather the face mask. With that we were done, all we had to do was head across to the hospital for the mouth swab.
I haven't been back to the hospital since Ellie came home, and I'd been worried that the panic attacks and nightmares I'd been having would all come to a head as soon as I attempted to walk through the door. I was wrong, I didn't even make it to the door.
As we started walking towards the traffic lights my whole body started shaking, like I was standing on a massive vibrating pad or something. My throay closed over and I couldn't breathe, and I really thought I was going to pass out right there. It scared me. If I couldn't go in for a simple swab test, how was I going to take her in on Monday? I felt really stupid and beat myself up for hours over it.
Once the swab was done we headed to Ronald McDonald with our two screaming children. Ellie was late for her feed because of all the poking and prodding, and Soph was upset about my panic attack and sick of sitting around all day. Poor Lisa must have wondered what she was getting herself in for letting us in the door!
But of course, once Ellie was fed and Soph was let loose in the toy room everything was fine. We started unpacking, rearranged our room to fit the portacot, and settled in for a good weekend before Monday's surgery. We had some fun things planned for Soph so that she would get to enjoy herself rather than sit around the hospital. Saturday my family were all arriving to keep us company, so we were pretty happy Friday night.
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