And now for an official update....

So, now that I have had a bit of sleep and things seem to be settling in to the new 'normal,' here goes. We arrived at CHOP at about 6:00 am the morning of Katie's surgery. By 6:15 or 6:30, she was checked in and getting ready for surgery. They gave her 'giggle juice,' which is a mother's best friend. Basically, it gets them all loopy so that they don't freak out when they get wheeled away. It was still hard to watch her, but it would have been awful if I had had any sense that she felt I was leaving her. The hardest part for me was watching her play on the side of the hospital bed, pulling herself up and laughing away. I knew that for the next three months, there will be now more standing up, and very limited mobility. That was hard for me. The surgery went quickly and by 9:00 it was done. It lasted about 45 minutes, I think. By 9:30, they let me in to hold her and she was not quite 'awake' yet. She slept for the vast majority of the day. Her recovery went well, except for a concern about her heart rate. They decided it was from dehydration and gave her some fluids via IV to give her a boost. That seemed to do the trick. After a long round of nonsense, we finally determined that the only possible way to get her home from the hospital before Christmas was to get Ambulance transport home. The only place that rents SPICA car seats no longer has any. Katie's carseat was too small for her. Jeff could have driven all around town, found a car seat that might work, and then drive down to CHOP to try it. If that didn't work, well....we decided it wasn't worth the try. They arranged for an ambulance to take us home late Friday night. That's another story in and of itself. So far, Katie has done really well. She is not quite her chipper old self, but all in all she is doing very well. She seems pretty content most of the time in the cast, though she does get frustrated some. She does want to be held quite a bit, and who can blame her? I need to get a beanbag chair for her to sit in. There are still a lot of quirks to work out, and I am sure it will be a trying three months for Mama. Hopefully it'll go quickly.