Ella's Surgery

Last month Ella had surgery done to fix her umbilical hernia. We noticed it a little under a year ago but just thought her belly button became an out-y until Dave's mom said she may have a hernia. We took her to the doctor and sure enough that's what it was. Apparently it's fairly common in girls. Ella was born with it but it didn't show itself until after she turned a year old. We met with a children's surgeon and he told us that it's a pretty simple and quick procedure and he performs most of these kinds of surgeries on children Ella's age. Dave had researched it and found out that this kind of hernia tends to fix itself by age 3 or 4 so we weren't sure if we wanted to have Ella go in for surgery or just wait it out and see if she healed over time since the hernia wasn't causing her any pain.

We decided to go ahead and have her go in for surgery after Dave took her camping one night. They went to Logandale for an overnighter and Dave said Ella started getting really cranky and upset. He couldn't figure out why she was so unhappy. He said her whole body was trembling and Shelly (Dave was with Shelly, Chris, and their boys) tried to give her some food and Ella's hand was shaking. Dave realized her hernia might be bothering her. He looked at her bellybutton and it was poking out more than usual and it had gotten hard. Ella wouldn't let him touch it. He packed everything back into his truck right away and started driving back toward Vegas. He called her surgeon and he told Dave he could try to push the hernia back in but if he was unable to he'd have to take Ella to the ER. By then Ella had fallen asleep in her car seat so Dave stopped on the side of the road and was able to push the hernia back in. We scheduled Ella to have surgery asap!

The day of her surgery Dave and I were both pretty worried about Ella's surgery. Dave gave her a blessing before we left for the hospital. Ella wasn't too happy that morning because she wasn't allowed to eat anything from midnight before the surgery until after her surgery. We got to the hospital at 9am and she didn't go in for surgery until about 11:30am or so. She was pretty good once we were in the children's waiting room. They had TONS of toys and things for her to play with while she waited to go into surgery. When the nurse came to get us to take Ella in we followed him down a hallway and then we had to hand over Ella. Normally Ella FREAKS out whenever anyone in scrubs trys to touch her but she went right to the nurse without crying. She looked a little worried but that was all. Me and Dave couldn't believe it. Dave and I went to the hospital cafeteria for lunch while we waited for Ella to come out of surgery. On our way back to the waiting room we ran into her surgeon. He had just finished with Ella and he told us that everything went perfectly. He said the funniest thing was how calm Ella was while they were getting everything ready to put her under. He said the nurse brought her in and sat her down on the table and she just sat there quietly with her arms folded and looked around. He said the only time she cried was when they put the mask on her to give her the anesthesia. I felt so releaved and thankful that she did so well.

Dave and I had to wait about another half hour to be able to go in and see her. When we finally did go in a nurse was holding Ella. The first thing the nurse said when she saw us was,"She's soooo cute! And she's sooo high!" I thought that was hilarious! Ella was really pretty out of it. I could tell her eyelids felt heavy to her 'cause she kept trying to open her eyes and they'd just droop down again. We sat with her for at least an hour trying to get her to drink something (the hospital has to make sure she can keep things down before releasing her to go home). She would just smack the sippy cup or Dave whenever he tried to get her to drink some. Finally the hospital let us go even though she wouldn't drink anything. Ella was pretty tired for the rest of the day. She wasn't at all cranky though. She was so good! She fell asleep at 6:30pm and didn't wake up until 9:30am the next morning. Ella was back to normal in just a week!