After Surgery Number 3

Ivee had a pretty good night last night. Mommy got brave and left Ivee with papaw for the night, while me, daddy, Britt and Ethan went home for a night. The kids are back in school, so we are wanting to try to get back to a somewhat normal existence. When I came in this morning, daddy was already here and Ivee was watching Nemo (her favorite movie). She looked really good, cheeks just a little swollen and reddish. She is sucking on both her thumbs, well, more like naughing on them. We waited a long time for her to be taken to surgery. She didn't have a set time, so it was a waiting game. Around 11:30 a.m., we headed down to pre-op. We found out, after they took her back for surgery around 12:20 p.m., that they needed to add two more procedures. The total surgery time would be between 2 to 3 hours. We got a phone call around 2:00 p.m. saying that her surgery actually started at 5 til 1:oo. Well, she finally came out of surgery at 5:50 p.m.... about 5 hours later. Over all she had the following done: the stiches removed from her head, spinal tap, bone marrow extraction, bone sample extraction, stomach/esophagus binding, opening of sphincter to small intestine, and a gastric (feeding) tube inserted in her abdomen. They did not get to check her central line, like the oncologist wanted them too. We will try to do this at a later date to see if we can get better return blood flow from it. They added the stomach/intestines procedure, cause the oncologist is afraid that once we start chemo and she begins to throw up, that she will aspirate fluid and this could cause fluid in the lungs. Her immune system will be down, so any chance of getting pneumonia would be very bad in her condition. So, the stomach binding and intestines opening will help to stop this from happening. She did great during the surgery, and she is in her room now and still doing fine. Dr. Emran, the oncologist, said that all her test results should be in Monday, and he will also go over the details of chemotherapy treatment that day. We will not be going home before starting chemo treatment. Treatments will probably begin at the end of next week and last 3 to 5 days. By the time we get to go home, we would have been in the hospital for a month. Pray that she heals quickly and with very little pain from the surgery. She was really starting to become more like her old self, and we are sure that she will probably regress. Thanks for the comments, and keep them coming. They mean more than you know. With love, Hope and Emmett