We just got home about 45 minutes ago. We weren't expecting to be home until tomorrow, but everything went very well. We got to the hospital at 4:30 yesterday morning, leaving the staff plenty of time to put her in a gown, weigh her, and put her bracelets on and giving us plenty of time to sit around and wait. Alison's surgery was scheduled for 7:00, but they didn't take her back until around 7:15. At that point, it was off to the waiting room for us. Dr. Schell came to tell us that she was in Recovery and tell us how the surgery went at about 8:15. We got to see her shortly after 8:30. She was screaming her head off, not so much from pain, although that was part of it, but from disorientation while waking up from the anesthesia. She was able to eat by 9:30, and did pretty well. Then the waiting began, because she was to go from Recovery to Neurosurgery ICU, and there were no beds available in NICU. I stayed with her for a while and Kevin got something to eat, then he stayed with her so I could get something to eat. The hospital she was in does not have a Pediatric unit anymore, so they had to do some searching to find her a crib, not that she wanted to be laid down once they finally did find it. She slept for the majority of the day, and was in a fairly good mood when she was awake, once we got her Tylenol dosage figured out, and once we were given the ok to give her Motrin, things were even better. She finally got a room at 8:00 last night, almost 12 hours after her surgery was finished. One gentleman complained about the fact that he had been waiting to be moved from recovery for 2 hours and the nurses' aide politely pointed out the fact that "that little baby over there has been waiting for a bed since I got here this morning." He didn't say another word about his wait. We were able to get her down for the night by around 11:30, giving me the chance to get a few hours of sleep before she started getting restless. I finally resorted to holding her for the rest of the night so we could both get some much needed rest. Her leads kept coming off and setting off her alarms, which kept waking her up. Dr. Schell came to see us this morning and, since she was eating well, had her pain controlled by Tylenol/Motrin, was not running a fever, and was acting normal, told us she could go home today after one more round of antibiotics if we were comfortable with that. Otherwise we could have waited until tomorrow. She got her IV out after lunch. Because she inherited her mother's terrible veins, they had had to put it in her head, above her left ear, and they used enough tape to secure Texas, so getting it all off was pretty traumatic because there was hair involved. Once that was done and her dressings were changed, we were set all set to go, as soon as our ride (Kevin) arrived. So we're home now, and she's doing great. She goes back to see the doctor next week for a check-up and to get her staples out.