Surgery

The Hardest day of my life so far was Monday, February 6, 2012, also known as surgery day. Lucy was born with Cranio Synostosis (her skull was fused prematurely) and she had to have surgery to remove the portion of her skull that had fused so her brain and head can grow properly. Her surgery was scheduled for Monday morning at 8 am. That meant that she had to stop eating at 4am, not an easy task for a 2 and a half month old. So we got to primary children'sat 6:15am and i was already emotional from hearing her scream for food and i had to say good bye to my baby as they took her away to surgery. An hour and a half after she went into surgery they called down to the waiting room that she was done, fine and the Surgeon would be down to see us shortly before we could see her in recovery. An hour later, the Surgeon walked into the waiting room asked to speak to us in one of the consultation rooms, he told us that while they had been removing part of her skull it was attached to the Dura (the protective layer around the brain) and that it had torn so they had to open her up more than they had and repair the damage. He told us that she had lost blood and spinal fluid, had received a blood transfusion and they didn't know if she would have permanent damage and possibly right side weakness or not. They were sending her to the ICU to recover and we would be able to see her there in a bit. We didn't get to see her until almost noon, 4 hours after I had sent her away into surgery. We spent the next 24 hours in intensive care watching her vitals closely and getting her pain under control. It was so hard to hear her wake up and scream out in pain when the morphine was wearing off. By Tuesday Morning they were able to switch her to oxycodone which works longer than the morphine and were able to move her out of the intensive care. During the first night they had to catheterize her because she wasn't urinating, but the second morning they took that out as well as her arterial line that was monitoring her BP. Tuesday afternoon her iv infiltrated and her poor little leg swelled to almost twice it's normal size. But luckily, they took it out and watched her sodium and urine output and she didn't need to have it put back in. Wednesday, Lucy was well enough to come home. Something that Nick and I were really looking forward too. Luckily Lucy doesn't seem to have any right side weakness but when we got her home on Wednesday she did scare us by starting to twitch in her right arm and leg. We got a hold of the nurse practitioner in the neuro surgery department and she said there wasn't any reason for Lucy to be having seizures but then on Thursday she called me back and said she had talked to Lucy's surgeon and he wanted to put her on an anti seizure medicine for a month to be on the safe side while she is healing. All in all I have my happy baby back, she is still in pain every once in a while and groggy from her medicine but she loves to smile at mommy and daddy and play with her toys. I think she has mommy wrapped around her fingers because she's thrown a couple of temper tantrums since she's been home when she doesn't get fed the SECOND she decides she's hungry (I'm talking holding her breath screaming tantrums). But after this week I think she gets to be a spoiled brat for a few days. Boy am I happy that she's home and all right.