Recovery

It has been just about a week since Sage's surgery and it has been exhausting! We knew the recovery would be difficult, but I don't think we were prepared for as difficult as it has been. Sage has taken medicine on a regular basis for acid reflux and has never really put up a fight, however, this past week of having to give her Lortab/ibprofin/amoxicillan has been one of the most challenging and heartbreaking parts of her recovery. As soon as she sees us open the cabinet with her medicine in it or if she even hears the word medicine she immediately starts crying and screaming, "no" and "way"(away-as in put it away). We physically have to hold her arms and legs down and hold her head and force her mouth open and hold her down until she swallows. She always gets so sad afterwards and just wants her blanket and to cuddle. To make it even worse, we are having to give her some medicine every 3 hours, even through the night. We have alarms set for midnight, 3 am and 6 am. It is so sad to wake her, but it is even more sad if we skip a dose of pain meds and she wakes up in pain. We know when she is hurting because she whimpers and holds her mouth closed tight and has drool running out of her mouth like a waterfall because she doesn't want to swallow. All the medicine upsets her stomach so she doesn't want to eat. Obviously if she didn't take her medicine on an empty stomach it would not upset her tummy as badly, but how do you explain that to an almost 2 year old? We have had to stretch our imaginations and creativity to try and come up with ways to get her to drink and eat. We got her a new Elmo/Abby Cadabby cup and at any given time you will find that cup along with a bottle of milk, bottle of water, bottle of juice, bottle of chocolate milk, her strawberry straw cup, her regular sippy cup, mommy's cup with the turquoise straw out for her to drink... We have been stocked up on pudding, applesauce, yogurt, ice-cream, sorbet, popsicles, mac and cheese, soup... we have got Sonic ice and icees for her. It is exhausting! Her schedule is so thrown off and she is just as exhausted. The timing of this has not been ideal, but we have loved and are soaking up all the extra hugs and snuggles.