Operation Day!

So today was the big day. We woke up at 5:00 am, (ouch!) and got rolling. Adrenalin is a strange thing - on any other day I would have been totally dragging. Today? Up, going, and ready to roll when I needed to be.

We got to the surgery center and checked in. They have a kids' room, so that's certainly handy. We had to wait for a little bit, but not too bad.

Dr. Jumper, quite possibly the nicest guy EVER, was Kelley's anesthesiologist again, and he came by shortly after she had taken the Verced. Verced, or, as Dr. Jumper calls it, Milk of Amnesia, is pretty much the standard for "taking the edge off." It's pre-anesthesia, I guess.




You can see by the pictures how much she LOVED taking the Verced.

Well, once again, we've learned that Kelley should NOT join a sorority at a party college when she's older. She's hysterically loopy when she's on this stuff. Quite humorous. She's very giggly and goofy, using her arms in big gestures....Wait - who am I talking about? Me? Or my daughter?

Anyway - after a time she was wheeled back and the surgery began.

She was finished around 10:00 or so, and wheeled back to recovery around 10:15. We were there waiting. This is the reality of surgery for your kid:


I wouldn't recommend it. It can be pretty gut-wrenching.

The good news? The surgery went smoothly, and all seems to be fine. Here's some details:

1) Dr. Reinisch took a skin graft from the same area as stage 1 reconstruction, only a smaller area. Unfortunately, it's seeping blood. Yew. The good news, though, is that it is a MUCH smaller area, and it doesn't have the marcaine suction dealie. Steri-strips for about a week, and they should come off naturally.

2) The area is secured by a sponge and some sutures:



The good news? We get to take the sutures off ourselves. Yay. Not really. Hopefully, with a little help from Papa Gene, that will go smoothly. We are to take them off in about a week.

3) She can resume normal activities in about 2-3 weeks.

4) Interesting little side note: apparently, there was a large plug in her ear, formed from skin and other biological 'stuff.' Dr. Reinisch said "I'm surprised she could hear. It was quite large." Her ear doesn't produce wax naturally, but apparently it does produce something. Not sure what. At any rate, we apparently should have been having her ear canal cleaned out by an ENT every 4-6 months. This is something that wasn't told to us at any time. Granted, we had some difficulties communicating with her local ENT, and I'm wondering if that is where the breakdown occurred. She went for quite some time without specialized care.

So, what that means is that it's quite possible her last audiogram was occluded by the plug. When we return to Portland, I will schedule another audiogram sometime in January so that we can get an accurate audiogram.

So, tomorrow we have a post-operative appointment with Dr. Reinisch, and then we are going to try to change our flight and head out a day early. It would be really nice to come home.

Until tomorrow....thanks for reading and for your thoughts & prayers.