post-op day 2

hi love=)

surgery went well. it was actually a little more complicated than they expected, but they were able to take care of everything and the fact that you never showed any signs of it being a little worse in there than we thought is a great thing. basically, it was a huge diaphragmatic hernia (only a tiny little rim of diaphragm left around the edge) and no diaphragm at all next to your esophagus. so he put in a patch like dr rodgers did at uva and sewed the patch to the little diaphragm you had and then to your ribs/vertebrae in the middle. it sounds almost exactly like what dr rodgers did when you were 2 weeks old...

yesterday was awful. awful awful awful. you were hurting a lot which we expected, but that doesn't really make it any easier to watch. i get really worried about the fact that you've had a bowel obstruction in the past and how lots of narcotics will slow down your belly from waking up even more, and you were needing a lot of morphine on top of the continuous epidural infusion you're getting. we decided to give you toradol around the clock (toradol is like amped up advil, and it's awesome) to maybe decrease the frequency of you getting morphine. and it's working!!! you got morphine at 9am yesterday, and 9pm last night, and none today so far!!! there's a risk for increased bleeding with toradol so we can't give it to you for too long, but it's working for what you need right now.

they went through your chest to do the surgery and that always makes recovery much more painful. but the major plus is that going in that way enabled him to not touch your intestines at all (there was that "mysterious membrane" holding them down that ended up being a hiatal sac and i have no idea what a hiatal sac is, but the important thing is that dr hebra just had to push the sac down and everything went back in place. and not manipulating your intestines also means less risk of another bowel obstruction.) and you also have a chest tube draining out blood and other fluid from in there, which also makes it more painful. so you have plenty of reason to be hurting so much sweet angel.

but yes, today is looking better. you're moving your legs (and crossing your ankles which i think is so funny because you almost always have your ankles crossed under normal circumstances. such a little lady;)) and you've given us a few tiny pity smiles. they do not at all look like genuine happy smiles, but you better believe we all kinda went nuts when we saw it=)

you haven't wanted your surprises from gigi but you're finally starting to come around. the first one she gave you was a cuddly elephant that she named elmer but daddy and i named it bontie elephontie. we're pretty proud of that name. it definitely makes us laugh but you haven't shown much of a response at all to how hilarious your parents are...

i've taken a few pictures with my phone but for some reason most of them have disappeared. it's probably just as well because you have been so pitiful and it's one of the saddest things i've ever seen. but here are some of the ones i still have...

your surgery was delayed by about 2 hours but you had a BLAST playing with all the toys in the holding room...

daddy wanted you to stand up in the car and play guitar with your tongue poked out. you did exactly what he said=)




this is from this morning when you were snuggling with bontie elephontie and gilly fish. look how grumpy you are=(



you still haven't really had anything to drink but these green "water sponges" are your friend. the first day when you got out of surgery you were ravenous with them. you actually bit off little chunks of it trying to get the water out because you were so thirsty.

dr hebra just came in to see you and said all is well. we're turning your chest tube from suction to just draining by gravity and he wants us to try and get you up a little bit today. this will no doubt be a challenge and painful with that whopper of a thing sticking out of your chest. but we'll see what we can do=) tomorrow we'll get your epidural out and maybe the chest tube too. we're starting to feed you pedialyte today so we'll see what your tummy decides to do with that. hopefully they will just push it right out where it's supposed to go.

love you babe. you are the bravest and toughest little thing i know.

mommy