Doctors, Doctors, Doctors!

So many of you have been wondering why we've been so quiet on our blog.  Well, aside from the lack of memory on our hard drive and trying to figure out a good archiving system/organization method for our digital files, the Christophers have been sick on and off since Halloween!  Emma and mommy have had a particularly rough go at it.  Daddy and Emma got over their strep, but a series of ear infections for Emma (6 in 6 months) led doctors to believe that her antibiotics never really worked and she had the same ear infection for nearly six months.  Of course, mommy blamed herself for not catching this earlier.  There was a fear for loss of hearing.  A hearing test showed good results, but reduced hearing in one ear.  They wanted Emma to get ear tubes and a more accurate ABR hearing test (which she was under general anesthetic for).  They decided to do them at the same time since Emma had to be under for the ear tube surgery anyways.  In addition, we've been working on an actual diagnosis for her chronic (daily) vomiting.  She also had an endoscopy with biopsies (of the esophagus, stomach and upper intestines) an hour or so after the ear tube surgery while she was still under.  When we got the results, it was mostly good news:  she did well on her hearing test after the placement of her ear tubes, there were no cancerous cells due to scarring of her esophagus from throwing up (although they found a small hiatus hernia), and the ear tube surgery went well.

Through it all, Emma was a real trooper on surgery day (Feb. 27th).

While Emma was in the waiting room for surgery,
she got to play with some cool toys.

She loves ride-on and push toys so much right now.

Waiting in the pre-op area.

She loves to color.

They had her fast so the last meal she had was the day before at 7pm.  When she woke up from surgery around 5pm, she was famished.  She ate a jelly sandwich, a veggie packet, some fruit snacks, crackers, and drank a glass of gatorade and a glass of water.  (That is a lot of food for Emma.  She usually eats that throughout one day.)

When we got home, she was tired, so we put her to sleep at 7pm.  She slept really well and acted like normal the next day.  However, the days following were terrible!  She caught rotavirus at the hospital and a bacterial infection from the doctor's office a week after that.  She basically had diarrhea, fever and vomiting for 12 days.  She had night terrors as a side effect of the anesthesia, waking up crying unconsolably every 45 minutes or so until two nights ago when she started sleeping through the night again.  She still has a runny nose and coughs, but otherwise, I think she is finally on the upward slope of getting better.  We are so grateful that everything went so well!  Soon, she will be back to her happy, healthy self again.