Clara's Foot Surgery

Clara had surgery yesterday on a vascular malformation on the bottom of her foot.  Normally these malformations don't need any treatment unless they are near a major organ or become bothersome.  I'm sure you can imagine that having one on the bottom of your foot would eventually become bothersome.  Also, these things grow as your child grows, so getting it treated now means a much easier procedure.  She was under anesthesia for an hour and 15 minutes...the longest so far as her first two times (see Sunflower Seed Incident and Breaking Arm) were a half hour or less.  She still handled it like a champ!  We have to go back in 8 weeks for a follow-up to make sure the doctor was able to get all of the vein treated.  She believes she did, but we need to double check.  Unfortunately, some of the Bleomycin got into a couple veins it wasn't supposed to (one of the surgery risks) and shut those down, but the doctor said the body will just create bypass veins to correct that.  Thankfully it didn't cause any complications!  On the way home from the hospital at 4:30, she says to Brian and I, "Is it lunch time?"  It's hard figuring out how much time has passed when you've been asleep! :-)

I guess I should have expected that if she's a pro at surgery, she's going to be a pro at being a patient.  She's quite demanding. :-)  I got her all settled in a chair after she got up this morning and she says, "Oh mom, can you get my fuzzy bear they gave me yesterday?  It's on your bed."  Sure...run upstairs, get the bear, come back down.  She then says, "Oh, and can you get the blue egg that is on my nightstand?"  Sure...run upstairs, get the blue egg, come back down.  No more requests for now...good.  Our cat knocked a pot of plants off the top of our piano and dirt was spilled all over the carpet including the plants.  I'm on the floor scooping everything back into the pot, trying to replant the plants (thank goodness we had more potting soil in the garage), and I hear the bell ring (we have an old school bell).  I call from where I'm at..."What do you need?"  She says, "Can you get me the little pink bird on the couch?"  I tell her I will in just a minute as I'm trying to get the dirt all cleaned up.  I come into the kitchen to throw away a paper towel and she says, "How is cleaning up the dirt going?"  I said, "I'm getting there."  She says (because now I'm nearby), "Can you get the little pink bird now?"  Sure.  I get all the plants re-potted and the dirt all swept up and she says she's now hungry for breakfast.  She wants to know her options.  I say, "Cereal, oatmeal, toaster strudel, toast...".  She says, "What kind of toast?"  I say, "Buttered with jam?"  She says, "No, I was thinking French Toast?" :-)  After telling her I wasn't going to make her French Toast or pancakes (she asked for those, too...I'm such a bad mom), she settled on Cocoa Puffs cereal.  I said, "Oh, and it's Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs!"  She said, "What does that mean?"  I said there are little white marshmallows in it.  She said she doesn't like the marshmallows.  So I had to pick out all the marshmallows.  And it's taken me over 30 minutes to write these two paragraphs, because the bell keeps ringing! :-)  It's a good thing she's cute!

The blue spot you see is the malformation.

In the recovery room.

Eating some animal crackers.

At home eating some chicken noodle soup for dinner.