Day 1 Post-Op

Things are going pretty well so far. Addy had a fairly rough night, but I think that was to be expected. She was pretty restless and crabby, but we both got some intermittent sleep at least. Her heart rate has been high, and her blood count was low this morning, so the reviewing doctor (the neurosurgeon) said she was on a borderline of potentially needing another transfusion (in addition to the one she had during surgery). Since we don't have any more directly donated blood, though, he said she was okay to wait and see how she is doing tomorrow. She seems to be doing a little better now, so hopefully we can avoid that.

The nurses wanted to wait until Addy was fairly awake before I held her, so I got to do this for the first time around 4 this morning. She drink a few ounces of clear fluid and held it down, which is a good sign. She has taken a few bottles of breastmilk since then and only threw up once (I think we gave her a little too much too soon), so that is going well.

The swelling is still fairly minimal, but I can tell it is definitely vamping up. Jeremy said the nurse told him that if she was going to swell really bad, though, she would have already been pretty bad by now. Maybe we will be able to avoid the typical eyes swelling shut that I have been anxious about -- that would be really nice!! (Prayer request!)

We've gradually had some of the various lines taken out of her, so now the only things that are actually internally inserted are an IV in her foot and a drain in her head. She seems a bit more peaceful and restful since we got out the two arterial lines that she had in -- yuck.

She did take a few rounds of morphine and some additional Tylenol, but the doctors have ordered that we should try to avoid the morphine now, and she seems to be handling it fine. They gave her a dose of some other pain killer through the IV (I forget the name), and with some Tylenol, that seems to be holding her over pretty well. She has been sleeping much more peacefully for most of the last 5 hours, which is GREAT.

We are still in the PICU right now, but we're hoping to move to a private room on the pediatric floor within the next few hours. I'll keep posting as I can.