July 07, 2014

The rest of our day

What a long day! 

  It started this morning with us being late.  Now before everyone that really knows me laughs and rolls their eyes and thinks "typical Tammi".  Let me explain.  It was not my fault!  I was told 2 different times, 5:30 and 6:30.  I asked the surgeon himself, what time he wants us here.  His reply "6:30".  I went with it.  He was the one operating on my child, he should know.  Well, I was wrong.  It was supposed to be 5:30.  I should have known better.  Dr's are never right when it comes to those kind of details.  Lol  It really wasn't that big of a deal, but everything was a little bit more rushed.  I actually felt bad for her nurse, but she did a good job getting everything done is that short time period.  Come to find out, we were suppose to come in early so anesthesia could prep her for a little while before the Dr was ready to operate.  Oops!  But they all admitted that it was not my fault and that is a kink in their system that needs to be worked out.
   They took Sadie back to the OR about 7:40.  They told me that they would come out periodically to give me updates.  Around 9:45 I started thinking about the fact that I hadn't heard anything.  The next thing I know, here comes the OR nurse. It's about 10 am.  "Just wanted to let you know that they just started her surgery". What!?  I gave you my baby almost 2 and half hrs ago.  "We had a hard time starting some of her lines because her veins and arteries are so small.  And we had a bit more of a challenge intubating her because her mouth is so tiny".  SURPRISE!  Yep, nothing I hadn't heard before, plus I warned them about both of those things.  I just giggled to myself, cause that is just who Sadie is.
   Around noon the surgeon came out to tell us that his part was over and that his partner was stitching her up.  The procedure went perfect.  No complications.  He said that the hole was much bigger then what the tests had shown.  He said that the wall (the hole) was not half missing like they thought, but was about 3/4 or more missing.  He said that the wall was almost completely missing.  Unreal!  It's amazing to me that that much can be missing, and not cause a problem.  He also fixed her mitral valve as it was leaky and not closing correctly.  And then he said "we also found something else, a surprise, that is incredibly rare, in fact I have only seen it one other time in my very long career, and that is that she also had a third hole in the mitral valve".  Are you kidding me?!  Did he just say "something rare, a surprise"?  Why does that not surprise me when it comes to this child?  I'm pretty sure I should just rename her Miss Rare or something.  My husband and I just looked at each other, laughed, and shock our heads.  The surprises never stop with her.
   After they closed Sadie's chest up, they did not have her go to the recovery room.  Instead she came right to her ICU room.  She got into the room about 1:30 or so.  Because of the difficult intubation and her severe apnea, they decided to leave the breathing tube in place while she woke up from the anesthesia.  No one wanted to reintubate her.  So sedated and vented she stayed for the rest of the day.  The plan was to keep her like that the rest of the night and extubate first thing in the morning.  However, Sadie had other plans.  She started to wake up from the sedation and breath over her vent.  The Dr's figured it was a safe bet that she would be fine, so around 8:30 they extubated her.  She fussed for a few seconds, took a couple of breathes, blinked her eyes a few times, looked around at all of us and went back to sleep.  Apparently, she wasn't too impressed with what she saw. Lol  Which honestly was fine with me.  If she's sleeping, she's not in pain.
   That leads us to this moment in time. She is now off all pain drips, and she is on 2 liters of oxygen which is almost her normal when she sleeps.  She is back to breathing only 6-10 times a minute while she sleeps and had a flurry of Dr and nurses a little worried until I reassured them that this is normal.
   She started with 13 tubes and wires at the beginning of the day and we are now down to 12.  The count down is on.  For those that don't know, the countdown is pretty much how you can tell when you will be discharged. 
   Thanks for all your prayers and thoughts today.  Talk to you tomorrow.  :)

 


 
 

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