Then, and much more acceptably, she needed tubes in her ears when she was two. After that surgery she stood up all wobbly like in her bed, took a big drink, then threw her cup down on the ground, looked at me and Mike and said, "Let's get out of here guys!"
We took her to India when she was in forth grade where she became so sick we had to admit her into the hospital. Wow. There is nothing like an Indian hospital. I first became worried when I noticed tiny bugs crawling all over the bed she was in. I put myself on bug duty and flicked bugs for the next twelve hours. By then the bugs were the least of my worries. The nurse, or possibly some random lady from the street, came into the room to give Makenna an IV. The panic set in when I noticed the needles were old and preused. I asked if they had been sterilized, but nobody spoke English. I said an intense prayer, and chose the needle that looked the newest. Five hours later another "nurse" entered the room and told me the doctor (who I had not yet seen) wanted a urine sample. I carried Makenna with her IV down the hall until we found the bathroom. It didn't make me feel good when I noticed that the bathroom was shared by all the sick patients on the floor, but when you are carrying a child who can barely move and might throw up at any moment and trying to balance an IV bag, you take when you can get. I noticed right away that there was no toilet paper because I was going to use it to cover the toilet seat. Plan B was don't be picky and sit the child down on the toilet before you drop her. That was when I noticed the bottle the "nurse" gave me was a tiny glass bottle like the one you might have gotten medicine samples in. It might hold a couple teaspoons of liquid. Also, the opening was very narrow. Being a girl, I knew there was no way her aim was up to this task. But we gave it a go. That was when I noticed there was no soap in the bathroom.It was noon the next day, and I had not yet seen a doctor, when I noticed her IV bag was nearly empty. I went to find a nurse to change the bag, but it was noon. There was nobody around. Even the front office was empty behind a metal gate that was closed and locked. Since I know nothing about nursing, I was at an utter loss. I had heard that bubbles in the blood stream is really bad, and I didn't know if the tube would draw in air once the liquid was out of the bag. So, I panicked and decided to change the bag myself. There were three extra bags lying next to the current one, so I said another intense prayer, randomly picked one, and switched it out. It must have been okay because when the next person walked into the room I told her, by means of pantomime, what I had done, and she just nodded. I took that as, "Good job fending for yourself in a third world hospital where you are doing stuff you have no way of knowing how to do!! You will surely get an award when you get home, and people will sing songs about you for years to come!" We saw a doctor in the morning, but by that time she had pretty much healed up on her own. We left soon after that, and I went to the front office to pay our bill. It came to $3.17. I still have the receipt.
When she was in fifth grade her stomach wasn't cooperating with her, so she had a tube with a camera on the end of it shoved down her throat to take pictures of the inside of her stomach. After that she got into the car and announced, "I need Olive Garden NOW!"
Now she has a tooth that just won't move. It is stuck up in her gums. You can see the outline of it. To solve that problem, the surgeon cut her gum around the tooth, exposed the tooth, glued a bracket to it, and connected a chain from the bracket to her braces that will pull the tooth down. After that surgery, she got into the car and said, "While I was in that room, I was singing a song with Sloth from Ice Age. Then the doctor walked in and started singing with us and we all danced around on a giant calendar."
I'd really like her to be a bit more boring.
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