Skip to main content

Surgery Recap

Abby was great this morning during pre-op and won over the nurses and anesthesiologist right away.  After the anesthesiologist started the anesthesia through the ventilator, Abby promptly popped the circuit off in typical Abby fashion!  :)  I envisioned all of the doctors and nurses falling over unconscious and had to stifle a giggle.  That's Abby!  We held her hands after they put it back on again.

She went to sleep no problem, and then I went back to the waiting room to...wait.  It was really crowded and at times I started feeling like I was going a bit stir crazy.  The Game Show Network was on TV really loud, one person in the waiting room kept calling out answers pretty obnoxiously, two people were working on Calculus together and discussing binomials and coefficients, and I feel like this is all just taking forever!  (In reality, it took a lot less time than we thought, but it seemed like forever!)

We were able to see Abby at around 11:30 and she was so pitiful.  She was writhing in pain and was just miserable.  They had her on a pain pump that we could click if it got really bad.  For a while, she would sleep for about 20 minutes and then need more.  They decided to give her some Tylenol and that seemed to really help.  She slept for about 2 hours and woke up more settled. 

The IV pump started acting funny, so the nurse tried to flush Abby's IV.  Sure enough, it had blown.  She spent the next hour or so working on getting Abby cleared to do all oral pain meds, which meant Abby had no pain meds during that time.  It was rough!  Once they sent the orders and they gave her a new Oxycodon and Tylenol cocktail, she felt much better.  :)

So....onto the results of the surgery:

*  The palate was an "easy" repair and he said it went very smoothly.  She even has a uvula now!  (It's a useless body part, but she has one!)

*  Our ENT was able to get tubes in her ears after a few tries--hooray!!  He found that there was fluid in both ears, but especially the right one--which was infected.  No one ever knew because we could never see her ear drum, she doesn't get fevers (ever), and she hasn't been rubbing it excessively.  Who knows how long she has had it, poor thing! 

*  The ABR hearing test showed that Abby's left ear is perfectly fine.  The right ear was a little off, but he thinks it's because of all the fluid.  He wants to have her retested (with a regular test, not an ABR) in 6 months to make sure.

*  The ENT took a look at Abby's airway and said it looks fine, but it's still small.  He doesn't think she will be having the jaw distraction.  He did change the length of her trach so that now she has a pediatric trach, as opposed to the neonatal size she had.

All of the doctors assured us that residents would not be doing Abby's surgery, and we especially liked the anesthesiologist she had.  She called Abby by name, and even told everyone in the OR that she goes by Abby.  She talked to her the whole time and was very sweet to me as well.  We really appreciated how good she was. 

I was surprisingly calm through the whole thing and didn't even cry!  I felt very at ease with our surgeons and anesthesiologist, which helped.  All of your praying did too!  :)

We went back to RMH for a super-fast dinner, grabbed my stuff, and then Matt dropped me back off here for the night.  Abby slept the entire time we were gone and is still sleeping.  I hope she still sleeps through the night after all the snoozing she's done!  I think  she will--she's had a rough day. :(

Thanks so much for all your prayers!!

PS:  Sorry for the delay in posting.  We had a ton of doctors visiting us all day long.  I started this several different times, but never really had a chance to finish it.

Comments

Tric Gillette said…
God is good all the time. Pray that Abby will heal quickly and get right back to amazing all of us.
Anonymous said…
Thought of Abby all day and all of you. So glad the Lord was covering her...not on to the healing.
Katie said…
so glad it all went so smoothly!
Food lover said…
My thoughts and prayers with abby. God bless you all.

Popular posts from this blog

Cerebrocostomandibular Syndrome

If you happen to pick up the latest Reader's Digest, there is an article in there about Piper Breinholt , a four year old with CCMS.  If you've been around here a while, you'll remember wayyyyyy back when we first received Abby's diagnosis that I was able to speak to Piper's mom, Reagan.  The article is more about their story and not as much about the ins and outs of CCMS, but I think it's probably enough to get some people googling it and I'm hoping a few will end up here. Every once in a while, I give a blog post the title of Cerebrocostomandibular Syndrome so that it would show up in Google.  My ever-present hope is that people will stumble across my blog and 1) be encouraged by the hope we have in Christ, 2) feel a connection with someone in a similar situation as them, or 3) get excited over the miracles that have been performed in Abby's life!!  (a combination of all 3 is great too!)  :)   Notice that it's not to get famous and it never wi

The Potty Man

Caleb LOVES to go potty! I have never heard a potty training story like this one....Caleb tells us when he needs to go, we take his diaper off, and he goes! Now, is it perfect? No, not at all! We aren't trying to potty train at at all, but we figure every time he goes is one less diaper we have to change! The only time we consistantly put him on the potty is when we give him a bath (he always pees in the tub, so we know he needs to go!) He almost always goes on the potty now instead of the tub though. When he's not "really" going potty, he's pretending to go potty! He's such a funny kid!

Lego Party: Favors

I'm a little slow in posting the Lego Party pictures, but I think I have a few excuses I could use.  At any rate, I wanted to share what I did for the party!  It will take a few posts, so stay with me.  I'll start with how I did the favors. These are the goody bags I made.  I just bought solid colored gift bags and matched scrapbook paper to each bag.  Then I punched circles and attached them with the 3D foam tape so that the circles were raised. I used the keychain (explained below) as a name tag on the outside. These are Duplo blocks.  I put a round magnet on the back and...voila!  A magnet!  (note:  hot glue doesn't work so well...I ended up reglueing them with my apoxy because the magnets fell off.) I made crayons using Lego man crayons.  Yes, I know this guy has lost half of his leg.  The others were already packaged and I didn't want to open one up just to get a picture.  I used a Lego mold  to make the crayons.  Caleb put small pieces of crayon in each m