On our trip to Philly after driving through lots of rain and waiting and waiting to see a rainbow, there one was! As always, a sign of God's promise...We had to wake this beautifully sleeping child at 5:45 am, thank goodness we had decided to check in to the Ronald McDonald House the night before. Or else we would have been up at like 4 to get to the hospital in time. But all we had to do was grab her and go, we waited to change her diaper for when she woke up. We were so thankful for the RM house, it was truly wonderful to have a place of respite just on the other side of the hospitals parking garage. So we woke her up and went to register...
At about 7am we started the pre-op procedures...we got her dressed in her little yellow scrubs and had about 15 people come in and ask us questions all in 20 minutes, it was insane! Insane! We answered the same questions to different people in the same room at the same time, craziness!
We know it may seem weird to have these pictures, but ya know, we lost all of the pictures from the day she was born so we get a little crazy about making sure we have the important moments caught. And truly this was a major moment in our little angels life and we took pictures...
They gave her some "silly juice" which was suppose to calm her down, but it was 7:30 in the morning and she really wasn't awake anyway...so it just didn't do much...They let her take her bear with her, and they even put a hospital bracelet on it for her...
She got a little sleepy and at 7:30 they rolled her away, i'll admit it, there were streams of tears running down my face. Daddy did much better as always, and Ella was fine, really not much phases that little angel. And we waited, and waited. Cheryl came and saved us from the agony of waiting by distracting us with breakfast, thank you Cheryl!!!!!!!! At 8:30 they called at let us know she had gone to sleep wonderfully and they had done the first shore procedure which decided how they would tackle the rest of the surgery. They began the major surgery at 8:30, we didn't get another call until 11:30, and that was to tell us they were beginning to close her up and the dr would be out soon. At noon the dr came out, and everyone else in the waiting room, doctors came out and talked to them there, ours decided to scare us and make us come back to a little office with him. I know he just wanted to have more space and a quieter place, but still, hearts jumped. He let us know that everything went fine and he showed us pictures of Ella's bladder. In the end he needed to move both of her ureters and re-implant them to allow for better bladder function. A little more major than originally thought, but always a possibility. So our little 21 month old has her ureters in new spots. It wasn't until 12:30 that we were finally able to see her. Well, Jay wasn't he was sent up to her room and I went to see her in recovery. My poor sweetie, she saw me and from that moment on I held her for days!
And she slept and slept and slept, there was no eating, no drinking, no waking, all she wanted was to be held and to sleep. She was given some medicine for infection and her normal antibiotics but no pain meds AT ALL. She got two doses of Tylenol when her fever started to rise, but other than that, no meds. And after we told 15 people she might have a latex allergy, what did they do??? Look at those poor sweet cheeks, they put latex tape to keep her mask on during surgery.
And she stayed swollen for a while, so puffy, look at these cheeks down here...
But she did great, she started to pee, and right away we could tell a difference, and since the surgery the difference has been remarkable, before she just kind of trickled peed, a little here a little there, now she pees. She now knows what it feels like to have a full bladder and to have the urge to pee. The poor thing is still trying to get use to that, it is a brand new feeling, imagine just all of a sudden to get the feeling of a full bladder...
The first thing we could get her to put in her mouth at all was a Popsicle, but she basically went 2 days without drinking, and 4 days without eating. She started to run a fever and throw clots, but she got it all worked out and now is back to her old self, sort of....
When we left the hospital we went to Jay's parents, and she still spent a few days just sleeping, and she also began waking in the middle of the night screaming, without opening her eyes, just screaming for an hour. We asked the dr about this and he said it was probably some of the psychological trauma of everything. It was heartbreaking. But thankfully when we got her home home she started to settle back in.
She is eating, drinking, sleeping (well as well as ever), playing, running, and peeing! She will need to stay on her daily antibiotic for a couple of months and needs to go for a follow up ultrasound later this month, but hopefully we are past the worst. We were told though that we will need to get Lily checked for this condition as a newborn, so we aren't completely through this yet, but man does it feel better to be here!
No comments:
Post a Comment