Last week Fran had to have her repeat operation; last year she had a bone graft from her hip into the space in her mouth. It was a horrible op, with lots of pain and bleeding and she took a long time to recover emotionally from it, mostly i think because they didn’t call us back quickly enough after it and she woke up without us and on top of that, they hadn’t given her enough pain relief and took a long time to get it for her, so they whole thing was very traumatic. She had a lot of very uncomfortable packing in her nose, the wound bled a lot for more than 24 hours and then on top of all that, it didn’t work.

So we had to go back and with that experience in the recent past, she was far more anxious about it. We did our best to make it easy for her and treated her to lots of attention the night before with both of us going to gym to watch and then a slap up meal after at a favourite pub. She was a pleasure to be out with and we had a nice time. Next morning we had to get up at 5am and were at the hospital for 7am; luckily she was first on the list and so there wasn’t long to wait. She went into theatre at .30am, the only child on the ward to get their op that day as there were then two car accidents that filled the theatres with emergencies

I took her into theatre as normal; she’d asked for gas to put her out but for some reason the theatre nurse insisted on peeling off the cream patches on her hand before she went off to sleep and the hurt really upset her. I’ve done worse (holding her down) but she got very frightened and upset in the last few moments. Yuck.

This time it was all very different. The floor of her nose had stayed intact and so didn’t have to be redone which meant no packing and no bleeding. When we went into recovery to see her she was still sleepy and dizzy but telling her that (she had rather hilariously sat bolt upright the moment she came round) did make her smile, which was lovely. Having been primed by Helen to be demanding, i’d insisted that lots of pain relief was given while she was in theatre and they did, so she was very comfortable and positively rattling when she woke up.

Within an hour she looked like this

and had eaten a large plate of mashed potato and minced beef.

She whipped Max 11-3 at Rummy

and eventually had to be put in a wheelchair and be taken to the shops as the 24 hours bed rest was proving too much of a challenge!

She was home the next day, a little more puffy and with a little more pain once all the local wore off but otherwise fine.

I managed to keep her off gym till Wednesday She did have a bit of a flag on Monday and worried both of us quite a bit as she got a temperature, a cough and flopped but then recovered. I think she has a cold but thankfully not flu

I was very grateful for the night i got to spend with the Old Manor Borns and all the lovely comments i got from friends wishing us well. It makes a huge difference to know people are thinking of you. The other 3 kids had a wonderful time at my parents house.

So, by Tuesday we thought we all needed a morning out so we took Josie to Gymmies. Josie had a nice time, Maddy stayed with a neighbour as we were only going to be an hour and Fran did a little bit of gentle exercise. Amelie was very excited as her coach was there and said they could have 10 minutes on the br at the end. As Josie and i were finishing off, Fran suddenly ran over to say Amelie was hurt :/

She gone to do a straddle undershoot on the bars (split leg standing on a head heigh bar, while holding on, then you swing under and dismount.) She’s done it loads of times before and her coach was watching but not right by her (slight improvement on my initial fear that she’d done it without permission). Unfortunately Amelie was too quick for R to get there and a bit over excited and not concentrating. She got to the top and pitched forward instead of swinging back and from what i gather, panicked, let go and pitched forward on to her outstretched left arm.

Which, naturally enough, broke

Poor Amelie; she was very upset and frightened and in a lot of pain and knew straight away wheat she had done wrong, which made her immediately very angry. Luckily Max was just round the corner at work and ran round, Fran was brilliant at keeping Josie calm and occupied and off we all trotted to casualty.

We arrived there at the same time as a bus crash full of old people and a dog attack on a child, so were slow to be seen but once she’d had morphine she perked up a lot. Several x-rays, lots of pain killers and lots of books and people later, she had a temporary cast on 2 broken bones in her lower arm, fortunately, incomplete green stick fractures. Unfortunately they were not happy to set them in casualty, so we had to spend the night on the children’s ward. We were very grateful for the hospital bag Fran packed for her – she knows exactly what to pack.

She had to have a general anaesthetic to set them (twice in a week, argh!) but was very brave, very good all night and home the next day.

Where she has been milking it ever since