Ear tubes & hearing test

We were at the hospital at 7am this morning for Autumn's surgery. Anytime we walk into a hospital we are always scared they will take us as prisoners & not want to release us. :) Hospitals overreact when they get a trach patient.  Anyways, we get signed in & back to the surgery rooms.  The nurse asks normal questions & listens to Autumn lungs.  They are not clear, they never are in the morning.  The drs who are going to do the 2 procedures come in to introduce themselves & see if we have any questions.  The anesthesiologist comes in to go over things as well.  He already starts in about us maybe needing to be admitted after the surgery because of all she has going on.  He repeats himself several times, which is making me so nervous that he's going to be one of those who likes to admit for everything.  I hate overly cautious drs.  They take Autumn back & she was actually smiling as they wheeled her bed down the halls.  I warned the nurse she may get so upset that she turns blue because she does that now so I was really nervous letting her go.  The nurse was singing to her as we walked down the hall & Autumn kept looking back to make sure we were following but smiling too.  It made it SO much easier to let her go but it does get harder as she gets older & starts to understand more.  She was back for an hour & then they called us in to talk with the doctors.  The audiologists came in first.  She said to do the hearing test, they put a few probes on her head (like they do with an EEG) and read her brain response when they play sounds.  They do loud & quiet songs until the brain does not respond & that gives them an idea of how much she can or can't hear.  She said the test looked PERFECT! Autumn has perfect hearing & her brain responded beautifully.  YAY!  As we waited for the dr who did the tubes to come in, they wanted me to go back to the recovery room with Autumn & take her ventilator.  When I walked into recovery, Autumn was already awake.  I put her on her vent & her sats were great.  The nurse said she should be going home because she did so great & is doing good.  Her chest sounds were clear.  She said they will keep her for 1.5 hours to observe her just to make sure she's fully awake & off the vent before going home.  The discharge nurse then took over & gave us our instructions & waited with us.  Autumn would desat like normal but would not move because she has an IV in one arm & the blood pressure cuff on her other arm.  I held Elmo on the ipad for her to watch & kept trying to suction secretions as she coughed them up.  She looked tired but content.  The nurse asked if I thought she needed motrin but her blood pressure was good & she seemed content to I declined.  About an hr later the anesthesiologist came in to check on us.  He suggested we keep her another hour.  I told him I thought we were fine to go.  He kept asking about if we had oxygen, ventilator, suction.  He acted like we have had not been doing this for 3 years.  I understand we are strangers to him & he was looking after Autumn's best interest but you have to trust the parents who care for her daily.  James even asked why he wanted to wait another hr because she will do better when she can get her arms free & sit up.  He said he would give us 15 more minutes & come back to make the decision.  The nurse & I raised her bed so she could sit more & wake up more, she was ready to take a nap at this point.  The recovery nurse came back in & whispered to me that Autumn is fine & if he does not release us & wants to keep us another hour for us to request to talk with the head of anethesiology (but we did not hear that from her). :) I love when we have nurses on our side, helping us to get home!  So, here he comes again....Autumn actually smiled for daddy while he was in the room & so the dr. asked a couple more questions & then said we could go home!!!  This was a COMPLETE God thing! I had asked people to be praying we would not be admitted overnight & God answered that prayer.  The nurse told us we were the first people EVER that she has EVER seen win the battle of discharge against that dr.  He keeps everyone & we convinced him to let us go home....see, all God!  As soon as we got into the car, Autumn perked up to watch her shows on the way home.  Since home, she has been all smiles & happy.  I am sure it feels good not to have fluid filled ears that make the world sound like you live underwater. :)  I am so happy that we managed to have our very first actual day surgery where we were not admitted the night before or had to stay overnight for observation...shows she's getting stronger all around!