Doctor Ashlyn

Today I went shopping with Ashlyn, and on our way home, Ashlyn became very upset because she missed Lynnea, and then she was afraid that "everyone in her family would die, and she would be all alone, and would miss everybody very much."  We talked about these things, and eventually she calmed down, but this is probably the biggest meltdown I've seen from her yet over Lynnea's death. 

After we got home, she decided to play "doctor" (this is incredibly common for her -- playing "doctor" has been one of her favorite things to do over the past two years).  This time, I was the patient (sometimes I get to be the nurse, but not today), and there was "something wrong with my heart" so, I needed heart surgery.  Initially, she thought that I should be awake for the surgery, but after much arguing, I convinced her that I wanted to be asleep if she was going to do heart surgery on me.  Then, after surgery, she was going to "put some dressing on me."  This made sense -- she had heard us talk about Lynnea having a "dressing" on after her surgeries.  Well, I asked her what kind of dressing it was, and she replied, "Ranch.  It's ranch dressing."  I couldn't help but laugh really hard at this.  She was very serious about it, and had no idea why I was laughing.  I was laughing too hard to try to explain to her that there is a difference between salad dressing and wound dressings...perhaps someday I will get around to pointing this out to her, but for today, I thought it was OK to just let her think that ranch dressing is an appropriate thing to put on someone after surgery.