I have Caitlin home at the moment recovering from her latest surgery. With this hospital experience fresh in my mind I thought I’d share some tricks that have worked for us.
- Use a toy medical kit (we’ve got a Fisher-Price kit from ALDI. Kmart sell a cheap one) to practise at home preop checks on a doll or teddy such as taking their blood pressure, listening to their heart, checking their temperature, ears, mouth, etc. Take the medical kit and doll/teddy to the hospital with you. When the nurse is doing their preop checks on your child, they can do the same thing on their doll/teddy. Involving your child will hopefully make it less scary for them and encourage them to be more cooperative.
- If you can get hold of an anaesthesia mask or even make one, practise using it at home. We had one from a previous surgery, so we told Caitlin it was an elephant mask and turned it into a fun game. She would hold it to her face and make noises in it pretending she was an elephant waving her trunk around. We stomped like elephants to the surgical theatre room and when we arrived, she got so excited because their elephant mask had such a long trunk. She happily took their mask and pretended to be an elephant like we practised and went off to sleep with no fuss. There were some very stunned theatre staff and one very relieved Mum that it actually worked.
- Wear dark coloured clothes, definitely not white and not your best outfit, because in recovery you will probably get covered in either tears, blood, snot, mucus, food or medicine from your child. Also dress your child in dark coloured clothes and not their Sunday best for the exact same reason. Make sure their clothes are loose and easy to take off and put on. You may have a canula, oxygen tubes, cords, etc to work around.
- After a surgery for a couple of days let your child’s healthy diet go out the window. Sometimes the most important thing is to just get any type of food or liquid into them, especially when taking certain medications. For the three days after this surgery all Caitlin would eat and drink for breakfast, lunch and dinner was yoghurt, chips, crackers, and milk.
- Finally, always pack a jumper for yourself and your child if you know your child is being admitted to a hospital room. Even in the warmer months the airconditioning can get absolutely freezing there, especially in the single rooms.
