Busy, busy, busy

This has to have been one of the busiest weekends in a long time! Friday, I took Hannah (all by myself) downtown for surgery follow-up. I am happy to report that all is fine and I survived the parking garage. Our van is so talk that the antenna scrapes the ceiling of the garage - every cross beam. It's just a little nerve wracking!
Then, I had bunco! Hooray for bunco!
Saturday morning I took my car to be looked at ( it's making a really weird noise ). No one can figure out how to fix the noise, but I needed a new serpentine belt. Aack!
Next, on to my house to pick up the girls and to high tail it to Sam's to pick up my nephew's birthday cake. Then, onto Ransom's 4th birthday. Unfortunately the girls had a birthday party to go to at 4, so we only stayed for a bit, then I took them to the party and I came back to the party. After Ransom's party, I picked the girls up from their party. And that was Saturday!
Sunday was church, Generations of Faith, book reports, Wal Mart any getting Stan's van tuned up and my serpentine belt on.
I'm tired!

Surgery is over

It was a grueling day. We arrived about 45 minutes early and were told that the patient that was supposed to go ahead of us was a no-show, so we could be bumped up. We thought that meant we'd get out of there even faster. Well, that was not meant to be. First, the surgeon couldn't get there until noon at the earliest, so we couldn't start too much earlier. Secondly, Hannah fought the anesthesia (again!) so after a million arguments and tears she ended up having to have an injection of versed instead of just drinking it. I got to wear the full Elvis surgeon jumpsuit and take her back to the OR, I think she was pretty mad at me most of the way there.

Hannah before the fight to drink her medicine

The surgery took much longer than expected, almost an hour longer. We're still not really sure why. The good news is that they were able to get the lens in her eye without using stitches (which apparently is a big deal). She only has one stitch which is where they made the incision to put the lens in. That stitch may never have to be removed, so we may be done with all this anesthesia stuff for good!

The bad news about Hannah having to get the injection is that it took MUCH longer for her to come out of anesthesia. We were allowed back into the recovery room at 2:30, and she didn't really wake up until 4:30. The good news about the injection is that the added medication meant that she woke up very peacefully. No thrashing, screaming or fighting. Just some irritation that she had the pulse ox, EKG leads, IV and shield and gauze on her eye. She had some apple juice, a Popsicle and graham crackers and we were on the way home.

It took us 2 hours to get home...nothing like rush hour traffic on a Friday :-(

Once we got home we had some Panera, went to bed, and got up at 6:30 to go downtown to get the gauze removed and have her eye checked.

Hannah in great spirits on the way to have the shield and gauze taken off

The doctor said all looks well, she has 90% vision in that eye. She has some astigmatism which will most likely have to be corrected with glasses. No biggie.

Now on to fight the insurance company!

Everything seems worse at 2am

Its 2am and I'm the only one awake. I hate that. I don't want to wake Hannah (who is sleeping with me in the hopes that she'll sleep in - surgery isn't until afternoon and she can't have anything by mouth after midnight) so I'm worrying. Not the most productive thing in the world to do, but at least it's quiet.
I just want the surgery to be over with and to have us all snug in our beds again.

2 more days??

Well, we are hoping that in 2 days Hannah will have had surgery and this will all be behind us.
Monday morning I woke up with a 'don't get on the plane' feeling about the surgery that stuck with me all day. Now I know why. Tuesday morning greeted me with a phone call from UIC stating that Cigna had denied coverage for the surgery. A billion phone calls and one super secret authorization code later, I thought all was fine. Nope. This morning, another call from UIC. The authorization will not cover anything but doctors visits, therefore the hospital and the surgery in it are not covered. We were specifically told, when we applied for the Continuance of Care, that ANYTHING the doctor authorized would be covered, including surgery. So, a barrage of phone calls has been made, Stan has called his HR people and I wait. I wait with eyes swollen from crying and a stomach full of knots wondering if this is going to be covered. Wondering if we're gonna bite the bullet and pay the out of network costs, or tell an 8 year old who just wants to see normally again that she has to wait.
I hate insurance.

Countdown to surgery

7 more days until Hannah has her lens implantation surgery. I can't believe we've been going through this for 6 months. Since May 11th, Mothers' Day, to be exact. If I sit down and really wallow in it - it sucks. It's not fair. I'm angry. I feel betrayed. I try to be a good person/mom/wife, follow all the rules, do as I'm told and this still happens.
Then I have to stop myself and remind myself how blessed and truly lucky I am. I have three beautiful, healthy (except for that eye thing!) children that were brought into this world against all odds. Even when they made it to being born, the odds were still about 10% that they wouldn't survive and 30% that there would be something 'wrong' with them. All three of them beat those odds.
I am blessed, too, that I have such a wonderful group of friends who rallied around me when Hannah got hurt. They will never know how deeply touched and awed I still am by all they did for me. I am a giver, and it is almost impossible for me to take. They knew this, and they made me take anyway.
Yep, life isn't fair. Things happen. I guess I am slowly learning that things can happen for no reason at all and it's what you do with the results of that happening that count. Right now I'm counting my blessings and counting down the days until another chapter in this story is finished.

Book Reports

Yes, 3rd grade is the year of book reports. We've just started our first ones. The girls have to make a presentation and a visual aid (in 3rd grade language, that's a poster).

Here are some pictures of their works in progress...

Hannah read Laura Ingalls Wilder's The First Four Years

Sarah read Patch the Perfect Kitten

Emma read Flat Stanley's Christmas Adventure

I don't recall asking my parents to google things for book reports! Or to do a google image search to get pictures! LOL

I think they will do fine!

Halloween 2008

I didn't get a whole lot of pictures, but I was able to get them to stand still for a few!





Emma as a vampire with her vampire husband




Sarah as a witch (a dead witch she told me)




Hannah as Miss America



Here's their whole class: