FRENULECTOMY-THE FINAL CHAPTER

I've often threatened to cut out Foghorn's tongue when her verbal diarrhea reached the level of unbearable.  Fitting, somehow, that the first "surgery" either of my children underwent involved my youngest's tongue.  I mentioned last week that she was having a frenulectomy, clipping the little strings of tissue under the tongue and hopefully aiding in her speech therapy.  It's not like she can't talk, God knows, but she has some lingering speech impediments, mostly notably making the "Y" sound instead of the "L" sound, which makes her lip balm obsession all the more irritating.  (You can only hear that nasally voice holler "I need yip balm!" so many times without developing a twitch.)

I will now admit that I have a weird reaction to hospitals.  With the exception of the period when my father was in the E.R. following his stroke (and most of his subsequent days in the hospital), I always get this ghoulish, giggling, inappropriate fit of black humor.  My mother has been witness to far too many hours of my shenanigans and she's never amused.  My sister, good ole Uncle Chester, has also been witness, but leans more towards finding me an almost welcome distraction.  Turns out, my daughter has the same gene.  We had to rise at 5 a.m., she had been fasting since the night before, and she was going to a place that for most kids would be unnerving.  How did Foghorn handle it?

She colored in the hospital-provided pirate coloring book.  She colored the first page all blue,
saying she was drowning the pirates...

She colored the next page all red, saying she was setting them on fire,
and then yelling, "Take that Mr. Parrot."

She harassed Uncle Chester with Oinkers.

A passing nurse smiled sweetly at Chester and she smiled back...until
she realized the woman was smiling at the pig on her chest.

She complained loudly and often to the nurse about the quality of the programming on the
hospital's television.  She finally started watching Arthur on my iPod.

She played her own warped version of "Go Fish" with Chester.

Once we were told she was next for surgery and she changed into her gown, the crackpot gene she inherited really took hold.  In addition to making obscene gestures up her gown, she got her groove on to a Backyardigans tune:

As the Professor likes to say, "Man, she makes Vincent Van Gogh look sane."

We finally made her stop dancing and rest for fear that her pulse would race and they'd cancel
her surgery.  As they wheeled her bed up the hallway she squealed, "Whee!!!"

The one time she looked mildly terror-stricken was when the anesthesiologist was putting the mask over her face to knock her out.  She also came out of the anesthesia more quickly than they anticipated, meaning I was not sitting by her bed when she suddenly woke up and freaked because, as she put it, "I forgot that I went to sleep here."  She had a quick Popsicle and then got to ride in the wheelchair to the van.  By that time she was complaining of a headache and nausea and it only figures that she managed to throw up that red Popsicle...all over the seats of the new van.  (I might add that I had the foresight to cover the seats with old blankets, but somebody moved them to the floor, meaning they were useless in protecting the sand-colored upholstery...not that I'm bitter.) 

We're still in the tongue-healing portion of this saga, so it remains to be seen how much mobility she's gained in her tongue.  I do know that after sleeping off the anesthesia for two hours, she was up and bouncing off the walls and talking non-stop as usual.  It'll be amazing if that thing ever gets a chance to heal.



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