Happy Birthday, FTS

Future Trauma Surgeon is 16 today.

She was born via C-Section because she was a footling breech. My water broke, I went to the hospital, her heart tones were good but the OB doc had a hunch she'd flipped so he did an U/S and he was right - she'd flipped and had her head up against my ribs.

Having a C-Section with an epidural was a very strange sensation. I could feel them rummaging around in there, and felt her weight lifted out of me when she was born.

She was a tiny wee thing, just 6lbs 12oz. She had big eyes and a scruffy little mop of fair hair. She was well for the first 6 weeks, and then got sick. We went home to England, and thanks to the sllooooooooow moving NHS, she spent a lot of her first year in a hospital with nephritis - she had a duplicated collecting system on her right kidney that had a different drain rate than the main kidney and it got infected. All the time. Porfessor Moriquand at Addenbrooke's performed a partial right nephrectomy 6 days before her first birthday and she hasn't had any issues since then - except for a big scar on her side, which doesn't bother her.

She's smart; smarter than I could ever hope to be. She's an Honor and High Honor roll student, and she knows what she wants to be. One of my proudest moments was when she came to college with me and we went down to the cadaver lab. She didn't flinch, and before I knew it she was in the abdominal cavity, identifying organs. 15 years old, poking around in a dead guys guts like it wasn't anything gross or gory or macarbe. Spectacular.

Happy birthday, Future Trauma Surgeon. There is no doubt in my mind that one day soon (for me, anyway. I know it seems like a long way off for you right now) you WILL be known as 'Doctor' and you WILL achieve your goal.

I love you, and I am incredibly proud to not only know you, but to call you my daughter. Happy Birthday, chickie.

Migraines

Future Trauma Surgeon has a migraine. Again. The second one in 6 weeks.

It started with an aura she described as 'like double vision' yesterday, but after a rudimentary neuro exam and a set of baseline vitals (both of which were normal) she said that the right side of her head hurt and she felt queasy. So, I sent her off to bed with 1000 mgs of tylenol and 25mgs of benadryl on board and hoped that it would have resolved itself by today.

Yeah, right. She still had the headache. So, off she went to the doctor.

She's now on Maxalt for the next time she gets a headache and 12.5mgs promethazine q 4hrs for the nausea. I've also given her another 1000mgs of tylenol, made her hydrate, and I'm sending her back to bed in a few minutes to see if she can't sleep it off.

I'm going to have to call the school nurse in a little while and do battle with her .... this school district is notoriously bad about student medications and administering them in a timely manner. I don't do well with this nurse: she's send the kids home for bullshit petty stuff (finger hurts - no swelling or brusing), but has kept them in school for things that I consider to be acute/urgent (broken ankle. Swelling, bruising, pain all present, but she kept the kid at school).

FTS has perked up considerably since she took the Maxalt. Says her 'throat feels weird' but that the headache has decreased considerably.

Yay!