Friday, June 09, 2006

Surgery today

12:25 p.m.- So far we’ve been doing a lot of hurrying up and waiting. Emma has not eaten since 7 a.m. and is not real pleased about it. Sean has finally gotten her asleep for now. She was admitted at 10 a.m. They sent us upstairs to the pro-op area. However, the NICU was waiting for her and shortly after getting upstairs we were sent back downstairs. She was weighed and is now weighing 7 lbs. 7 oz. She had an I.V. put in. It took awhile to get a correct blood pressure reading since she was screaming and screaming.

Sean and I are hanging in here. Barely. It’s rough to be back here. We never thought we’d have to come back here and are flooded with memories. The smell of the NICU is making me neasous. I don’t want to be here but I don’t want to leave Emma either. Hopefully, the surgery will be sooner rather than later. She was “added in” so she will have it whenever they can fit her in today. It can be right at 1:30 or as late as 7 p.m. We’re hoping that she comes out of surgery well and doesn’t have any breathing issues afterwards.

The best outcome for the surgery is that it will stop the progression of the ROP and we can work on ‘fixing” the damage at a later point in time.

2:00 p.m.- Still waiting for the OR to open up. Emma’s I.V. was occluded so it had to be restarted. She is starting to settle down and sleep a bit. We’ll start the drops to dilate her eyes when the OR calls.

3:30 p.m.- The OR called. The drops were put in and her eyes are dilated. We’ve talked to both her optometrist and her anesthesiologist and signed the consent forms. It’s real. This is happening. I’m starting to get really antsy and just want it over with. We called our pastor to meet us here to pray over Emma before she heads into surgery.

4:15 p.m.- They prepped her for surgery and put her on the warming table. She looked so innocent and tiny! Our pastor managed to make it just in the nick of time to pray with us. We then walked her to the OR and let them wheel her in. We both managed to choke back our tears and try not to think about it and instead joked with the pastor.

We’re expecting the surgery to take about an hour but with time to put her under and bring her back they’re expecting about 2 hours. Sean just left to go get Lily from the babysitter. He’s going to take her home and call around to see who can come stay with Lily so he can come back and be here for when Emma gets out of surgery.

6:30 p.m.- Dr. Mehta just came out and let me know the surgery went well. The tried to extubate her but she was holding her breath so they reintubated her. He said she was doing very well though. She was back in the NICU being stabilized. Before we were able to go see her she ended up pretty much pulling out her ventilator and did just fine. I guess she just needed to wake up from being put under a little bit more. She is weak but doing well. I will probably be heading back at 9 for a feeding and then coming home to get some rest. We are exhausted!

Here are some pictures from today’s events.

Waiting for Surgery




Pre-Op



Post-Op

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let us know when Emma's allowed to go home?

Anonymous said...

I'm so grateful she came though so well!