Surgery is done.Again

Caitlin came out of surgery after about 3 hours and she's finally resting peacefully. This time the surgery and the time in the recovery were longer and more complicated. The surgeon found a hiatal hernia when he went in to 're-do' the Nissen that came unwrapped last March only days after having it done. He was able to repair everything but now Caitlin is pretty sore. I've been trying to get this post done most of the afternoon, but she's in so much pain that I keep stopping to help her. During the recovery room time they had to give her: 3 doses of Morphine, 1 dose of Delotted, 3 doses of Zofran and 1 dose of Benadryl before they were able to get the pain and nausea under control. She was able to come to her room around 1:30pm and the combination and amount of drugs in her system helped her sleep relatively peacefully until 4:30pm, during which time Ryan "bonded" with her by sleeping on the parent bed. She woke up hungry and thirsty but has a 'nothing by mouth' order so we had a couple of really grumpy hours to deal with. I managed to distract her for about 20 mins with a trip around the hospital in a wheel chair, Hannah Montana bought us about 45 mins and the rest of the time was spent trying to explain why she can't have "even just one grape". At 5pm and again at 7pm she had doses of Morphine to control pain, and the 7pm dose knocked her out cold. Thank GOD! I know that sleep is the best medicine for her right now. She's getting plenty of fluid with her IV so the less she cries the better. She is so strong though, only six hours after her surgery she was up and walking to get into the wheel chair. 3-4 steps from the bed to the chair, then later 10-12 more steps from the chair to the bathroom. Then it was back into bed for a round of tears until the 7pm medicine started working. I'm hoping that when the doctor does his morning rounds he'll say she can have a little something to drink so she doesn't feel like she's starving. That's the second worst part about being in a hospital-they never feed you! At least they never feed you soon enough after abdominal surgery. The worst part is the pain, but at least we can manage that with drugs, I don't know of any drugs that make you feel full when your stomach is empty. So we'll pray that she can either start eating/drinking soon or that she can at least sleep through the recovery time until she can eat and drink again.