One Tough Cookie! {Part II}

Ok, here is the follow-up on the toughest little girl I know…

On October 8^th, we had an ultrasound to look at Ameliah’s gallbladder. And guess what…the stones were completely gone! Not one sign that they were ever there at all! Hallelujah! I was so proud of myself for being so consistent with her nutrition and cleansing. The doctors and nurses are confounded about them being gone. I have heard from a few of them that they have never seen that happen.

 

On October 9^th, we woke up super early and took our little girl to the hospital. They checked us in and it felt like FOREVER that we had to wait. All the while, Ameliah was in good spirits and playful and said that she was excited to have her surgery. I was impressed. What person of any age is excited to have surgery? I figured it was because of how restricted she was because she was on blood thinners. Also, I was very aware that she had a ruptured appendix in her abdomen and I had horrible visions of it becoming inflamed again and causing problems, which would further delay her surgery. Thus, I was super protective and she felt like she missed out on a lot of stuff!

 

About ½ hour before her surgery, a Child Life representative came in and talked to her about what was going to happen during her surgery. She showed her pictures of an operating room and showed her all the machines and things she would see in there. She gave her a little oxygen mask and let her decorate it with stickers. Then she let her pick out a flavored scent that she rubbed on the inside of the mask (because some kids say that the sleepy time gas smells like feet).





 

They let her pick how she wanted to go to the operating room and she chose a wagon. So, they wheeled our little girl away with a smile and a wave.

 

And then the wait began. The doctor warned us that she planned to take her time because of all of the inflammation from the rupture. She thought it might take an hour. An hour rolls by, and still no word. They had a monitor on the wall that listed all the surgeries and their statuses. I was glued to that thing waiting for it to say “in recovery”. Finally, the nurse called from the OR to inform us that it was taking longer than anticipated because she had a lot of adhesions. My obvious response was “What’s an adhesion?” Her reply: “I don’t really know, I’ll let the doctor explain it to you”.

 

I hung up the phone, and of course, I immediately Googled “adhesions”. Turns out, it’s just a fancy word for scar tissue. Apparently, it is really common to have scar tissue when you have abdominal surgery. But, she hadn’t even had her surgery yet, so I wondered why she had these adhesions. Then I remembered that her abscesses “walled off” the infection. The “wall” had to have some type of border, or lining to it. So, even though they drained the abscesses, there was still some tissue left. Ok, thank you Google for clearing up that question. I can calm down somewhat. I kept telling myself that it is a good thing that they are taking so long, it means they are doing their best, right?

Finally, the surgeon came out. Whew. She said it went well and she had pictures for us. I was so excited. (I even considered posting them here, however, I realized that others might not be as interested in seeing my daughters insides as I am, so I decided against it. You’re welcome.) She showed us her gallbladder and said the color looked really good and healthy. She showed us her appendix and the point where it had ruptured. And we saw what caused it. Still inside her ruptured appendix was a ball of constipated stool. It got stuck in there and created this whole problem. Well, her appendix had been laying on her intestine, and this piece of compacted stool had created a pinhole in her intestine. She said it was small and she was able to stitch it and hopefully it won’t cause any problems. Then she showed us pictures of her adhesions. She had some large ones that she had to cut. She said that generally they will just go away on their own, but some of them were so large and in a place that could constrict her bowel down the road if she didn’t remove them.

 

The nurse came out and ushered us to her recovery room where we waited (for a long time) for her to wake up.

 

 

When she did, this is what we saw…

 

That’s right, they took out her two front teeth! The anesthesiologist asked us in her pre-op if she had any loose teeth. Her two front teeth have been super wiggly for a long time, but she wouldn’t let us take them out. They intubated her during surgery and they didn’t want the risk of them coming out during surgery and going down her throat. The tooth fairy showed up before she even woke up from surgery, and she wasn’t sad at all to have them gone.

I love her toothless grin!

 

Even though they consider it outpatient, we still had to stay overnight for observation. We were excited to get to go back to the 7^th floor and see some of the nurses we knew. Shanita, who was our favorite nurse, was there and popped in a couple of times to say hello, even though she wasn’t our nurse this time. Ameliah really liked her and talked about her and even drew a picture of her after we got home from the first hospital stay.

By the next morning, we were so ready to get home. As soon as the surgeon and the doctor cleared us to go, we were asking the nurse for the discharge papers. Ameliah felt so good, she walked all the way to the car by herself. She came home and just wanted to sleep.

 

 

That night, she wasn’t complaining about pain, but we could tell she was uncomfortable. She was very emotional and she started to cry. When I asked her what was wrong, she said that it was hard for her when they wheeled her away in the wagon because she got scared. She thought we would be allowed to stay with her the whole time. I had no idea that she got scared then (she put on such a brave and happy face for us) and it broke my heart to hear her say that she was scared.  I really had to convince her to take her pain meds, but when she finally did she slept comfortably all night. Since then, she has not had one single thing for pain and has not mentioned being scared again, either. The next day she woke up and said “Mom, I feel like I never had surgery at all”. Yay!

 

Once again, we feel so blessed with how everything has turned out. The timing of everything went together perfectly. She got off of her blood thinners on exactly the day she needed to in order to have her surgery on the 9^th, which was during fall break. I wanted to do it then because she had already missed so much school and was going to miss the next week of school for a family reunion. Also, the surgeon said that when she was in there, she could tell that her abdomen was still a little inflamed. If we had done the surgery even a week earlier, it would have been too soon. But, because the compacted stool was making a hole in her intestine, doing surgery later would have caused the hole to be bigger, potentially causing more problems. We know that the Lord has watched over us through this entire experience and we feel truly blessed.