Oh, the gall! Final (hopefully) chapter!

Just wanted to do a quick update--  Piper just fell asleep (hopefully for the night)…

She was in surgery by 11 this morning, so we got in a little early.  Not a bad thing, seeing as my nerves were completely shot. 

She was so happy this morning—it kind of broke my heart to do this to her today.  Okay, so no matter when we did it, it would be hard, but really?  How do you send this little face in for surgery???

(side note:  No, Luke is not holding down Piper’s head.  In fact, I think in this picture he was trying to tie the back of her gown together.)

The anesthesiologist called us last night to discuss everything.  Her biggest concern was that Piper was a preemie, so that increases all her risks.  She was concerned about her being able to (and wanting to) breathe on her own once she was extubated.  She was also very leery about allowing her any narcotics for pain management, because it can increase the risk of her apnea-ing or having bradycardia episodes.  So they decided to do a spinal block instead of offering narcotics.  They also woke her up from the anesthesia while she was still in the OR so that they could intervene if needed.  As if that didn’t freak me out…

Surgery lasted about 1 1/2 hours.  Dr. Kay said that there wasn’t much scar tissue to contend with, so that helped.  AND she was able to reuse one of the incision sites from her last surgery, so she’ll only have 4 scars in her belly, instead of 5.  Since she was in there, she also looked at the anatomy of her duodenum, just to have a look at her last handy-work.  It’s reassuring to know that there isn’t anything funky there, too. 

She’s really swollen tonight (they say that her spinal makes it harder to get rid of the fluid until the block wears off), and pretty grumpy.  She’s not maintaining her oxygen levels too well, either, so she’s on blow-by through the night.  That’s, theoretically, a side effect of the spinal as well, so they’re not too worried about it.  The only other thing is that, even though they used a newborn-sized intubation tube, they think it was a little too big for her, so she’s really hoarse.  She’s gotten a couple of breathing treatments, which have helped.  The RT said that she sounds pretty chunky, and tried to chalk it up to congestion, but seeing how she hasn’t been congested (and we know what that’s like), it’s either because of swollen airways or because some of her extra fluid has made its way to her lungs.  Ugh.  Hopefully by tomorrow everything will be looking better.  She is eating well, so that calms my nerves a lot. 

Anyway, I guess that’s all- it’s over, she’s done, and hopefully this will be our last visit to the world of abdominal surgery.  I’m so done! 

Thanks to everyone for the thoughts and prayers!