Explaining Ouchies, Surgery and Recovery

Today is the day of my surgery! And I think a blog post is just the thing to distract myself from my growling stomach and throbbing head due to not being able to eat from midnight last night until my surgery at 3:00 plus the post-op time (about 3 hours left to surgery and I'M STARVING!) I don't do well without food. But it'll be worth it when my knee is better.

Over the last 4 weeks, I've spent a lot of time reminding my 4 year old and now 2 year old to be careful of my hurt/ouchie knee. The Pumpkin has been doing pretty well, remembering to walk around my leg when I have to stick it out from a chair, being patient when it takes me time to hobble over to get her something, and listening/following directions when I ask her to stop swinging her legs because they bang my chair and hurt my bad knee. There was only one time that she threw a package of socks to me which hit me EXACTLY in the worst spot of my knee, and when she realized what she'd done, she said sorry immediagely. (I never realized a soft package of socks could hurt so bad!)

The Pookie has less understanding and memory for these things, but he has also really be good about it and gets better and better with regular reminding. I regularly tell him when he gets near my left leg, "Mommy's hurt knee. Ouchie. No touch." Now he pats my left thigh or shin, looks up at me and says, "Ur knee? ur knee?" for hurt knee. And I respond, "That's right. Hurt knee. No touch." Then he pats my right leg somewhere and says, "Goo knee?" And I respond, "Yes, that's Mommy's good knee." When I put him to bed, he has gotten used to not rocking and he's been more and more careful about where he puts his feet and legs when he's sitting on my lap.

I'm constantly amazed at what kids can adjust to in a short amount of time.

Yesterday, I explained to the kids (well, mostly the Pumpkin) again that I'm going to have surgery and what it is. I told them that something is torn inside Mommy's knee (showing my daughter what a tear is using a piece of paper) and that the doctor needs to go inside my knee and fix it up. The Pumpkin seemed to understand that pretty well, especially since I know it takes a few times of explaining for kids to get things, so I have explained it a few times. Most of it is still over the Pookie's head, but hey, he can tell me that the car is blue!

Yesterday I mentioned to the Pumpkin that I would have to spend a few days after the surgery "recovering." I don't think I had gotten into this with her before, and she asked what "recovering" meant. I explained that recovering was spending time in bed, not moving much and not doing much of anything except things like watching shows on TV or reading and maybe some snuggling so that the knee would get all better after the surgery. I told her that I wouldn't be able to get up and play or do much of anything. But that once I was recovered and I did some exercises, my knee would be all better and that I would be able to do everything I did before!

She seemed to take all this in fine. In fact, she told me that when I was recovering, she was going to go into her room and get some books from her bookshelf for me to read. How sweet is that?!?!

Thankfully, my mother-in-law and father-in-law are staying with us to help Londo with the kids so he can take me to the surgery and take care of me while I recovery. Recovery for this surgery should be only a day or two, but as Londo pointed out to me a couple weeks ago, I generally take almost twice as long to recover from things as the doctors say. So I'm planning on 2-4 days, but I know that I will keep getting better and better until I'm back to normal and can run around with my kids again!