The second surgery resolved a huge problem which had been undetectable until other problems had been resolved…
Julie’s surgery went perfectly. The doctor plugged what he called a “large” hole between two arteries. As I mentioned yesterday, the hole should have closed on its own after birth, but some preemies require surgery. She has an incision in her left side about 1 ½ inches long. The doctor was very confident that he resolved the problem. We expect Julie to graduate from the breathing machines in the new few days.
In the meantime, she remains heavily sedated from surgery. I have included a picture from after surgery. She will wake up sometime tonight, but remain under some nice pain drugs for a couple days while she heals. We were told that she will look a lot worse tomorrow which is a normal part of recovery. By Friday, she should be feeling and looking better. Feeding should commence tonight or tomorrow. When we left, the staff was busily working to adjust the breathing machines and other meds based on Julie’s blood work.
I held Julie last night. It took her a few minutes to settle down, but then slept peacefully for an hour.
Julie was sounding alarms fairly constantly when we arrived today. I was able to calm her down for about a half hour before surgery while Sarah was checking with the nurses.
Julie filled a diaper when we arrived and then filled a replacement before the nurse had a chance to fasten it… she dumped quite a load… it was a two-fer!
We had a wonderful time with one of the hospital’s “counselors” (she has a PhD) eating lunch, laughing and sharing stories during Julie’s surgery. Everyone in the NICU could hear us laughing. One of the staff told us he thought we were having a party and it was music to his ears since the place is normally rather glum.
Of course, no day at the hospital is complete without some panic about the insurance. We started the day with a call from the insurance company saying that our coverage was about to expire. So, I filled in the monotony of the day with multiple calls to my employer’s benefits office, the insurance company and the hospital billing dept. There is no cell phone service within the NICU, so I have to go up two floors to use my cell phone for the 1-800 calls and “borrow” a hospital
phone for internal calls. By the end of the day, everyone agreed that I had things covered last week, but that the computers hadn’t had a chance to dump their loads of data to each other… another two-fer!
After surgery, we visited with Julie and some more of the staff. By the time we left, we felt like we had completed a marathon. We watched Tangled at the dollar movie and got a snack at Applebee’s.
Tomorrow is Julie’s one month birthday!
Andy & Sarah Horn
Julie’s new incision is much smaller than the one from her first surgery. It’s just under her left arm on the side. This incision will mean shorter recovery time for Julie. As you can see, she just needs a small Band-Aid over the incision instead of the large gauze she worn for a week after the first surgery.
In the unborn, they don’t use their lungs, so they don’t need to push all their blood through the lungs. God forms them with a connection between two arteries to focus the blood flow where the unborn needs it.
Birth usually triggers a special mechanism to close this pathway between arteries to form the adult blood flow pattern you learned in high school biology. In preemies, sometimes an aspirin can trigger the mechanism when it gets confused. Otherwise the surgeon leaves a small stable between the arteries to close off the opening.
Our surgeon (same fellow from Julie’s 1st surgery) said the hole was rather large from his experience. If Julie can almost breath on her own with this limitation, I believed that she could breath on her on once all the problems were resolved.
Once we realized that this procedure would resolve such a large impediment, our attitude changed and we lost all fear and worry. We trusted our doctor since he does this operation multiple times a week. So, like the first surgery, we laughed and enjoyed ourselves.
The staff had begun to notice that once Julie heard our voices, she would respond by changing the readings on the monitors. After they told us this several times, I realized that I might help Julie by keeping her calm prior to surgery. She didn’t understand anything about the surgery, but was still fighting the machines and struggling against the feeling of shortness of breath. Remaining calm, helped her feel better and cooperate with the machines rather than fighting against them.