A brief surgery update

I'm tired, but thought those of you not on facebook would appreciate a surgery update on H. The very short story is all is well and she is staying overnight in the hospital and we hope to bring her home tomorrow. (J. is staying with her.) 

Here's the slightly longer version. Originally her surgery was scheduled for 11:40 this morning, but Sunday night we received a call saying the patient ahead of us on the schedule had cancelled, so we were asked to move everything ahead two hours. So, we got everyone up and out the door and to the H-S Family's house where they were spending the day and then drove up to the hospital. We arrived on time and they admitted H. And then we waited and entertained the girl and waited and colored and waited and did stickers and waited some more. Finally, she was taken into surgery at 11am and we were notified that surgery had officially begun at 11:30. I'm so thankful the person ahead of us in line had cancelled because I hate to think what time surgery would have started with another person on the schedule.

J. and I did some work in the waiting room and were then notified that things were going fine, but surgery was going to take longer than anticipated. We decided to get some lunch while we could and then went back to the waiting room to continue with whatever work we had brought along. (We joke that some of our longest dates in the past 8 months have all occurred in surgical waiting rooms.) A while later, we were joined by the surgeon who reported that H. was doing fine and proceeded to tell us about the surgery.

The good news is that he is pretty happy with what he was able to do, but the bad news is that this statement was qualified by the word 'considering'. He was happy with what he was able to do considering the complicating factors he discovered. You all know H. has quite a bit of tissue overgrowth on her face. (The extra mass is not a tumor, but excess tissue.) Well, we know that, but we never considered that this overgrowth of tissue could be anywhere else. It turns out that she has excess tissue all under her scalp as well. The problem with this is that it made it difficult for the surgeon to move the new skin exactly where he wanted it. The extra tissue caused there to be a lot less play in the skin than is normally seen in tissue expansion. (OK, that's what I understood the doctor to say. I have a sneaking suspicion that if he were to read it, he would wonder if we were in the same room.) Anyway, it means that he wasn't able to remove quite as much of the nevus/sebaceous skin as he would have liked. Since I had already discovered that H. will have more tissue expansions in her future, this didn't cause me as much distress as it might have. There are still multiple more surgeries to go. 

When I left J. and H. late this afternoon, H. was still extremely tired. Her head is completely bandaged and she has two drains in which will stay for the next week or so. (I'm really good at changing drains now, though.) Because of dealing with the extra tissue and shaving some bone in the skull, there was quite a bit of blood. Not enough to cause H. to need a transfusion, but let's just say I'm glad it will be the nurse changing her dressing in the morning. Even with all the bandaging, it was so nice to see her head without the tissue expander. I think she will be happy about that. When she reaches a point where she can be happy about anything. She had a lot done and I anticipate this being not a very pleasant week for her.

I've put all the small people to bed and I think I will be heading there myself very soon. I'm sure I will have more to report after H. comes home tomorrow. Thank you for all of your prayers.