My daughter's stitches from hand surgery are coming out next week finally. We had a bulky dressing on for awhile but we are down to just regular bandaids at this point and we add padding for when she wants to play or has soccer practice. Her hands are still bruised from the surgery and IVs. She looks like she's a street brawler, punching out kids.

Every time I opened that dressing or remove her bandaid I want to cry looking at her poor little knuckle all stitched up. Of course I suck it up and tell her good it looks. She's so brave, she looks at it with almost a fascination but then looks away before she peeks back. It is healing well and she's got most of her mobility back.

I'm just happy this is pretty much over. In the past year, she's been through two sets of feet problems, the finger problem, a medication problem and some other issues. I'm grateful to the bottom of my heart she doesn't have any chronic health disease because I know that journey is long and hard for people. However for a basically healthy child, this has been a lot and I'm sure hoping we are done with stuff for awhile.

The surgery bill hit our insurance - $7,800. We are still waiting to figure out how much we will end up paying out of pocket. Our bank account too would like to feel that we are done.