Addy's Surgery

Addy's surgery is officially over!!! Everything went REALLY well.

Now for the long version of the story...

We got to the hospital about 9 am. They took Addy back to the OR about 11:30. I went with her and held her while they put her to sleep with a gas mask. She didn't like that very much, but she went to sleep pretty quickly. Leaving her there was hard, but I knew she was in good hands.

At 12:30, we received word that the surgery was started. We got updates about every hour after that, letting us know that everything was going well. (That was definitely helpful!) A little before 5, they told us the surgery was finished and called us back to talk with her doctor.

Dr. Marcus (the plastic surgeon) told us that the surgery went excellently. She had very little blood loss -- he said they probably would not have even done a transfusion except that they already had my donated blood there, so they went ahead and gave some of it to her to make her a little more comfortable. He was very happy with the way the cranial vault reconstruction (reshaping of her head) went. He said he actually got through that part really quickly -- in about 3 hours -- but the little dermoid cyst on the back of her head was apparently pretty annoying and took about another hour after that. But overall, he thought everything went really great and really smoothly.

When we saw Dr. Grant (the neurosurgeon) later, he added the good news that her brain adjusted right back to where it should have been if her skull had not been compressing it a little. All good on that front as well!

We got to see Addy about 5:30. She looks GREAT!! I mean, she definitely looks like she has been through a lot, but she looks a lot better than I thought she might. And we are very happy with how her reshaping of her forehead looks. This will not be a final result at all and will be changing over the next several months and even years, but it already looks a lot better.

As of less than an hour ago, she was going in and out of sleep a little, but is mostly sleeping, waking up and crying for a minute, and then going back to sleep. We'll see how things go throughout the night.

For now we are praising God that everything went so well. Thank you, Lord!!! And thank you all for praying! Please continue praying for her as she recovers. THANKS!

Addy just after surgery

(I will be posting a link to more pictures later at some point.)