The Story of the Little Christmas Appendix

Six months later I'm finally getting around to writing about Mandie's holiday surgeries.  This is pretty detailed, feel free to skim.  Pics from my phone at the end.

The night before Christmas Eve (the 23rd) the kids bedded down in the living room to spend one more night with the Christmas tree lights before Christmas.  After they'd been sleeping for an hour or two, I was sitting in the living room and Amanda woke up fairly suddenly, sat up, held on to her hip, and said it hurt.  I thought she might have been lying on it wrong on the hard floor.  A little while later she still couldn't get back to sleep and said her tummy hurt.  She sat on my lap for a while, and tried to sleep more, but continued to be miserable.  After a while it became obvious that she had some pretty bad pain, but she wasn't having diarrhea or throwing up.  So I started to wonder about her appendix.
If it had been during the day, I would have taken her to instacare an hour or so after she started complaining.  If it had been summer, but still the middle of the night, I would have taken her to the ER after about 3 hours.  As it was, it was a very cold, snowy night, and she did not want to leave the house.  Neither did I.  After a while I told her that I thought we should just go anyway, but she was so miserable that a car ride sounded torturous. So she would try to tell me it didn't really hurt that bad. She also kept telling me that the pain was in the middle of her tummy, not on the right side. Around midnight, I remembered that our insurance has a nurse advice line.  I called it, and all the nurses were busy, so they took down my information and said a nurse would call me back as soon as possible.
We put Amanda in her bed, and she finally fell asleep after a while, but I could tell by her breathing that her body was still in a lot of pain.  The nurse hotline took a lot longer than I thought it would to call me back, so I just sat and watched her and went back and forth from her room to mine asking Jason what he thought I should do.  I was really worried about her, but I also hated the thought of making her so much more miserable by putting her in the car on a freezing night and making her endure the poking and prodding of the ER.
Finally at 2:30 I called the nurse line again and found out they had written my number down wrong.  When I finally talked to a nurse and told her what was going on, she told me to go to the ER.  It was really nice to have someone make that decision for me!  So I gathered Mandie up, put her in the car with the seat laid back a little, and headed out.
The people at the hospital were wonderful and sweet to my little girl.  I was really relieved that the doctor didn't feel the need to torture her with a CT scan (and the necessary drinking of copious amounts of distilled water beforehand) like they had with Josh.  The surgeon was coming in at 7, and he felt comfortable waiting until then.  She got an IV put in, which was much less terrible than it could have been, and they admitted her and brought her to a room.  The surgeon came in at 7 and agreed that she should have an appendectomy.  Amanda's nurse was Crystal, a girl that used to babysit my kids back when Jess was a baby!  She was great.  When I called Jason and told him what was going on, he wanted to make sure she got a blessing before the surgery, but we didn't have much time.  He couldn't come (poor dad) so he started calling people.  I asked Crystal if there were guys around who could do it if no one was able to come, and a nurse and a social worker volunteered.  They were really awesome to stay close by and wait to see if our friends would show up.  Two awesome men from our ward got there just in the nick of time and gave her a very sweet blessing.  They also moved my car for me and got some of the snow off of it.
Amanda did not want to go and have surgery.  She was scared to have to go without me.  She kept trying to tell me that she didn't want to do it, and I kept having to explain to her that she didn't get to decide!  Poor little princess. She was crying when they rolled her out of the room.
She was done with surgery within an hour, and thank heavens they got the appendix out before it burst.  I had been mentally preparing for the possibility of of postponing our Christmas morning, but they told us we should be able to leave that afternoon.  Word spread around our ward and family that we were in the hospital, and we got lots of offers of help and support.  It was so neat to feel so loved.  Nat packed up some stuff for us and our neighbors across the street brought it over, along with a lovely lunch for me.
Joy and Brooklyn came to visit and brought Manda a coloring book and toys, and some Christmas treats too.
We left to go home at about 5 PM.  I was so glad it wasn't any later.  We arrived just before the roads got really bad, and with enough time to have all of our usual Christmas eve fun.

In the ER, sad little frown

They brought her some toys to play with while she waited

Officially a patient

Heading off to her own room

Sleeping after surgery

Starting to wake up

Coloring in the coloring book Joy and Brooklyn brought her

Unfortunately, that's not the end of the story.  Mandie's biggest incision, right on her bellybutton, started to swell after a couple of days, and it hurt her too.  I made a few calls to our surgeon throughout the week, and finally on New Years Day we headed back to the ER.  When the surgeon looked at it, he decided to do another surgery to drain it.  I was hoping it would just be quick and we'd be heading home that day, but they kept her overnight.  This stay was even longer than the first one!  Mandie couldn't wait to go home, but she was a very patient little patient.