Surgery went great. It was a little faster than expected. There were no surprises or complications. The only thing that came up was, her blood pressure needed to be controlled with medication. We handed her off at 7:30 am and got to go back to her room with her around 2 pm. Everyone had told us she looked great and was doing really well. Once we saw her she actually looked better than I expected her to look. The breathing tube was through her nose and there was a gastric tube in her nose. To me the nose doesn't look as uncomfortable as through the mouth. She wasn't as swollen or puffy as I was preparing myself for. Her color looked good. She ended up only needing one chest tube, which does not look as bad as I imagined either. She had 4 IVs, one in her neck, one in her arm, one in her leg and one in her ankle. She also had a catheter, temperature probe, pulse ox, blood pressure cuff, heart rate monitor and big stickers on her head to monitor oxygen consumption in her brain. Oh and one big long bandaid on her chest, but honestly it is the last thing I noticed.
She didn't wake up until closer to 5 pm. Once she showed that she could breath on her own they were able to take her breathing tube and gastric tubes out of her nose. She was then given an oxygen cannula. Once the breathing tube was out she was still very fussy. Nothing was soothing her. She was already on every medication possible, she wasn't allowed to eat yet and we couldn't pick her up. When she would get really fussy her stats would drop so eventually we were given the ok to hold her. Two nurses helped get her into Tim's arms in a chair. She calmed right down but Tim was stuck. I, the loving wife and mother, hand fed him his guacamole burger and fries. It was pretty entertaining. She slept in his arms from 6:30-9:30. At 9:30 she was finally allowed to eat. We needed to start with pedialite, which she downed, then we have her breast milk from a bottle, which she downed. Once she ate fine she was able to take some different oral medications which really seemed to have helped her pain. Getting her back into bed was a mess but we eventually got her untangled and swaddled and to sleep in the crib. We were able to get a parent "sleep room" (aka a random tiny room with a pull out couch and a bathroom), so I was able to get a good nights sleep and a shower this morning. Tim stayed in her room. She was up for bottles twice durning the night. Right before I came back down this morning they removed her neck IV and the catheter, which she hated, and then she fell back asleep.
We are hoping to start to breast feed again today and try to start to get her back onto some sort of schedule, at least day vs night since she slept the entire day yesterday. They are pretty sure that the reason she was so fussy is that she is having the "Glenn headache". When kids have this Glenn surgery, it changes the blood flow and pressures in the top half of the body causing headaches. No one is sure how long it will last or how she will handle them. I've heard that the worst of it should be while we are at the hospital, it should get better in a couple weeks but could last a couple months.
Over all things are going really well. Please pray for continued healing, no infections, pray against swelling and headaches. Pray for feeding and scheduled to get back on track. Pray for rest and energy. Pray for thing to go so well that we can go home in a couple days. We are missing the boys but they are having lots of fun with their nana and g-pa. Pray for them too.
I've been going back and forth about posting her post-op picture on here or not. I think I will because it's not too graphic or gory and I think it could be helpful for other parents about to send their child into surgery to see before hand. However, I don't know how to from my phone. I've never posted on here from my phone before (sorry if there are lots of auto correct errors)!
No comments:
Post a Comment