Thoughts on Elizabeth’s Surgery Day (Written on June 14)
Today Elizabeth had a heart cath and a stent put in her left pulmonary artery. We drove to Children’s Hospital in D.C., and stopped on the way to drop off papers at the passport office. We are planning to move to Italy this summer, and when we visited the passport office a couple of days ago, we forgot our paperwork, and Elizabeth did not have her driver’s permit or Library of Congress badge, so she could not sign any papers, since she did not have a photo ID. Today she signed her papers and I gave them the birth certificates they needed.
We arrived at Children’s hospital at noon, but because there was another cath before us, and because that cath took longer than expected, we had to wait quite a while before they called us back. When we were called back, they gave Elizabeth two hospital gowns and she changed in the bathroom. She put the first on opening in the back, and the second opening in the front, so she could be as modest as possible. The nurse put in an IV, brought Elizabeth a stuffe animal-- a dog in a train engineer's hat-- and then the doctor and anesthesiologist talked to us. We asked to doctor many questions, and got good answers. He said if the cath was not put in, the narrowing would continue to put strain on her heart and lungs, making everything she does more difficult. He said the stent is a couple of centimeters long and will be opened to a few millimeters across. In “normal” people, one lung gets a bit more blood than the other—about 45/55%. In Elizabeth her perfusion scan showed 70/30. In about 6 months her body will cover the stent in cells, but until then there is a slightly increased chance of blood clots. Also, until then she should have prophylaxis antibiotics before dental work. After that she won’t need it. When we were done with our questions the doctor left and we waited for a couple more hours.
They finally finished with the 9-month-old baby girl and wheeled her out of Cath lab one, past us. She was so tiny, intibated (sp?), with oxygen, and she reminded me of Elizabeth when she was a baby. It was hard not to cry when I saw her.
At a quarter to three they took Elizabeth into cath lab two. I went with her. She climbed onto a very narrow bed and I helped hold up one of her arms, since the bed was too narrow for her to have anyplace to put her arms. One of the nurses brought arm rests for the side of the bed. The doctor gave Elizabeth the first med in her IV to make her start to get sleepy. Elizabeth started laughing like she does when she’s nervous. I asked if she was nervous and she nodded yes. She said she could taste the taste in the back of her throat that she gets when she’s having surgery. The anesthesiologist said it’s a real taste caused by the meds. Then he gave her another milky white med in her IV. She said it burned, then fell asleep. I told her I loved her, kissed her on her forehead (it was very warm), and left the room. It was really hard not to cry.
I returned to the room we’d been in and a nurse said the doctor from the previous cath was talking to the baby’s parents in the waiting room. I could go out to the waiting room when they were done talking.
When the other family was done talking to their doctor the nurse took me to the waiting room. I asked where the cafeteria was, since I had not eaten since that morning. She told me, and said she would be out in a hour to tell me how everything was going with Elizabeth. I went down the hall to the cafeteria and got a small Styrofoam bowl of French onion soup, a salad, a bottle of orange juice and a bag of Fritos. (I was really hungry for Sun Chips, but they didn’t have any.) While I was eating I called Mike and told him they’d taken her in. He was surprised I wasn’t calling to say she was done, because it was already after 3.
Whe I was done eating I went back to the waiting room—a small, purple, semi-circular room with some chairs, a tv (not turned on) and a phone on the wall. I had planned to write or read Mindstorms, but both felt too difficult when I was so worried. So I pulled out the other book I’d brought—Dragon Slippers—and read it. Not much thought required.
Soon the nurse came in to say everything was going well. The doctor was still in the see-how-things-look stage. She would be back in an hour to tell me more.
I read more. In another hour she returned to say things were going well. He had placed a stent and she figured he would not need to do anything else, since she had not heard him mention any other things that needed to be done. She would be back in another hour.
I read more. But before a half hour was up, the nurse returned and said they were done! Everything had gone well. They would be wheeling Elizabeth past the waiting room on her way to recovery soon, but I should stay there so the doctor could talk to me.
I tried to read more, but was watching for Elizabeth and waiting for the doctor. Soon nurses came out of the double doors outside the waiting room wheeling Elizabeth past me on a bed. I only got a glimpse of her before she was gone through another set of double doors.
In a few minutes the doctor came in. He looked happy and sat in the chair next to me as he told me how the cath went. He said there were no problems, that he put a stent in, and showed me pictures he took during the procedure. He pointed out the wires from her open-heart surgert she had at 9 days old, the braided wire of the thermometer the anesthesiologist put in, and the line of the cath. Then he showed me the narrowing in the left pulmonary artery, saying it measured 8 mm diameter, while the non-narrowed places measured 14mm. The next picture was an “after” picture, showing the stent (barely visible) and the same place on the artery, now 14 mm all the way along. He said there was some mild narrowing at another place that had been there for years, had been balloon dilated in 1990 and 19991, and had not gotten worse since then, so he didn’t think it would ever be a problem. There was no problem with her coronary arteries. He gave me a post-cath care pamphlet, the two pictures and a small card stating the make and lot number of her stent, in case we need to know in the future. Then a nurse came to take me to Elizabeth.
She was in a recovery room with three solid walls and one wall made of a glass sliding door. This was as private a room as they could provide. Elizabeth was on a bed, covered in hospital blankets and shivering like crazy. The nurses were working on fixing her IV and asking her to not move her hands—which seemed silly to me, since she was shivering so badly and mostly unconscious. Her eyes were not open and the nurses had to move her head for her. When they fixed the IV one went to get more heated blankets. We covered her and tried to get her warm, although one of the nurses said the shaking was from the anesthesia, not cold. I stroked her forhead and told her I loved her, and that the doctor said everything went well, that he’d put in a stent, and that she should be home tomorrow in time to audition two boys for Harvey. She nodded a couple of times, but mostly shivered, was asleep, or made little gagging sounds.
After about half an hour she started to throw up, and I was glad for her that she hadn’t eaten since 11pm last night. The nurse brought some anti-nausea medicine and put it into Elizabeth’s IV.
Gradually the shivering lessened, and now, finally, she seems to be sleeping peacefully. I did ask for some more heated blankets for her, since it’s quite cold in this room. It’s about 8 pm and she has not really been awake at all yet. The dog the nurse gave her before surgery is on her bed, she has an oxygen mask blowing extra oxygen by her face to keep her saturation levels up, and she has several blankets on her, including one over the top of her head to help keep her warm.
I’ll be spending the night here with her. =)
(And that, I think, is about the fastest 1560 words I’ve ever written!)
Now as I post this, it is Saturday night- the day after her cath. We are home and Elizabeth is doing well. She slept on and off during the night. Her alarms kept sounding because her heart rate was so slow-- in the 40s-- and her oxygen saturation levels were low-- in the 80s. But by morning her sats were 100 (this is the saturation %, so 100 is as good as it gets), and her heart rate was staying above 60. She had an echo, we were told the stent looked good, we had breakfast (Elizabeth wasn't hungry at first, but ate two small pancakes, some yogurt, two slices of bacon, scrambled eggs, a few small pieces of watermellon and a couple of strawberries), met with the cardiologist who put in the stent, and came home. Elizabeth is to spend the week-end resting, and not do any strenous activities (exercising, vacuuming, lifting, etc) for two weeks. She will take an asprin a day for 6 months.
We are thankful for all the prayers ofered on Elizabeth's behalf, and especailly for the blessings of our Heavenly Father.
Book recommendation of the day: Dragon Slippers, by Jessica Day George. A simple peasant girl is told to offer herself to a dragon so the local lord's son can rescue her, marry her, and save her family from poverty. But instead she takes matters into her own hands, befriends the dragons, talks her way out of an arrangement with the lord's son, and eventually saves the entire country from ruin.
Today Elizabeth had a heart cath and a stent put in her left pulmonary artery. We drove to Children’s Hospital in D.C., and stopped on the way to drop off papers at the passport office. We are planning to move to Italy this summer, and when we visited the passport office a couple of days ago, we forgot our paperwork, and Elizabeth did not have her driver’s permit or Library of Congress badge, so she could not sign any papers, since she did not have a photo ID. Today she signed her papers and I gave them the birth certificates they needed.
We arrived at Children’s hospital at noon, but because there was another cath before us, and because that cath took longer than expected, we had to wait quite a while before they called us back. When we were called back, they gave Elizabeth two hospital gowns and she changed in the bathroom. She put the first on opening in the back, and the second opening in the front, so she could be as modest as possible. The nurse put in an IV, brought Elizabeth a stuffe animal-- a dog in a train engineer's hat-- and then the doctor and anesthesiologist talked to us. We asked to doctor many questions, and got good answers. He said if the cath was not put in, the narrowing would continue to put strain on her heart and lungs, making everything she does more difficult. He said the stent is a couple of centimeters long and will be opened to a few millimeters across. In “normal” people, one lung gets a bit more blood than the other—about 45/55%. In Elizabeth her perfusion scan showed 70/30. In about 6 months her body will cover the stent in cells, but until then there is a slightly increased chance of blood clots. Also, until then she should have prophylaxis antibiotics before dental work. After that she won’t need it. When we were done with our questions the doctor left and we waited for a couple more hours.
They finally finished with the 9-month-old baby girl and wheeled her out of Cath lab one, past us. She was so tiny, intibated (sp?), with oxygen, and she reminded me of Elizabeth when she was a baby. It was hard not to cry when I saw her.
At a quarter to three they took Elizabeth into cath lab two. I went with her. She climbed onto a very narrow bed and I helped hold up one of her arms, since the bed was too narrow for her to have anyplace to put her arms. One of the nurses brought arm rests for the side of the bed. The doctor gave Elizabeth the first med in her IV to make her start to get sleepy. Elizabeth started laughing like she does when she’s nervous. I asked if she was nervous and she nodded yes. She said she could taste the taste in the back of her throat that she gets when she’s having surgery. The anesthesiologist said it’s a real taste caused by the meds. Then he gave her another milky white med in her IV. She said it burned, then fell asleep. I told her I loved her, kissed her on her forehead (it was very warm), and left the room. It was really hard not to cry.
I returned to the room we’d been in and a nurse said the doctor from the previous cath was talking to the baby’s parents in the waiting room. I could go out to the waiting room when they were done talking.
When the other family was done talking to their doctor the nurse took me to the waiting room. I asked where the cafeteria was, since I had not eaten since that morning. She told me, and said she would be out in a hour to tell me how everything was going with Elizabeth. I went down the hall to the cafeteria and got a small Styrofoam bowl of French onion soup, a salad, a bottle of orange juice and a bag of Fritos. (I was really hungry for Sun Chips, but they didn’t have any.) While I was eating I called Mike and told him they’d taken her in. He was surprised I wasn’t calling to say she was done, because it was already after 3.
Whe I was done eating I went back to the waiting room—a small, purple, semi-circular room with some chairs, a tv (not turned on) and a phone on the wall. I had planned to write or read Mindstorms, but both felt too difficult when I was so worried. So I pulled out the other book I’d brought—Dragon Slippers—and read it. Not much thought required.
Soon the nurse came in to say everything was going well. The doctor was still in the see-how-things-look stage. She would be back in an hour to tell me more.
I read more. In another hour she returned to say things were going well. He had placed a stent and she figured he would not need to do anything else, since she had not heard him mention any other things that needed to be done. She would be back in another hour.
I read more. But before a half hour was up, the nurse returned and said they were done! Everything had gone well. They would be wheeling Elizabeth past the waiting room on her way to recovery soon, but I should stay there so the doctor could talk to me.
I tried to read more, but was watching for Elizabeth and waiting for the doctor. Soon nurses came out of the double doors outside the waiting room wheeling Elizabeth past me on a bed. I only got a glimpse of her before she was gone through another set of double doors.
In a few minutes the doctor came in. He looked happy and sat in the chair next to me as he told me how the cath went. He said there were no problems, that he put a stent in, and showed me pictures he took during the procedure. He pointed out the wires from her open-heart surgert she had at 9 days old, the braided wire of the thermometer the anesthesiologist put in, and the line of the cath. Then he showed me the narrowing in the left pulmonary artery, saying it measured 8 mm diameter, while the non-narrowed places measured 14mm. The next picture was an “after” picture, showing the stent (barely visible) and the same place on the artery, now 14 mm all the way along. He said there was some mild narrowing at another place that had been there for years, had been balloon dilated in 1990 and 19991, and had not gotten worse since then, so he didn’t think it would ever be a problem. There was no problem with her coronary arteries. He gave me a post-cath care pamphlet, the two pictures and a small card stating the make and lot number of her stent, in case we need to know in the future. Then a nurse came to take me to Elizabeth.
She was in a recovery room with three solid walls and one wall made of a glass sliding door. This was as private a room as they could provide. Elizabeth was on a bed, covered in hospital blankets and shivering like crazy. The nurses were working on fixing her IV and asking her to not move her hands—which seemed silly to me, since she was shivering so badly and mostly unconscious. Her eyes were not open and the nurses had to move her head for her. When they fixed the IV one went to get more heated blankets. We covered her and tried to get her warm, although one of the nurses said the shaking was from the anesthesia, not cold. I stroked her forhead and told her I loved her, and that the doctor said everything went well, that he’d put in a stent, and that she should be home tomorrow in time to audition two boys for Harvey. She nodded a couple of times, but mostly shivered, was asleep, or made little gagging sounds.
After about half an hour she started to throw up, and I was glad for her that she hadn’t eaten since 11pm last night. The nurse brought some anti-nausea medicine and put it into Elizabeth’s IV.
Gradually the shivering lessened, and now, finally, she seems to be sleeping peacefully. I did ask for some more heated blankets for her, since it’s quite cold in this room. It’s about 8 pm and she has not really been awake at all yet. The dog the nurse gave her before surgery is on her bed, she has an oxygen mask blowing extra oxygen by her face to keep her saturation levels up, and she has several blankets on her, including one over the top of her head to help keep her warm.
I’ll be spending the night here with her. =)
(And that, I think, is about the fastest 1560 words I’ve ever written!)
Now as I post this, it is Saturday night- the day after her cath. We are home and Elizabeth is doing well. She slept on and off during the night. Her alarms kept sounding because her heart rate was so slow-- in the 40s-- and her oxygen saturation levels were low-- in the 80s. But by morning her sats were 100 (this is the saturation %, so 100 is as good as it gets), and her heart rate was staying above 60. She had an echo, we were told the stent looked good, we had breakfast (Elizabeth wasn't hungry at first, but ate two small pancakes, some yogurt, two slices of bacon, scrambled eggs, a few small pieces of watermellon and a couple of strawberries), met with the cardiologist who put in the stent, and came home. Elizabeth is to spend the week-end resting, and not do any strenous activities (exercising, vacuuming, lifting, etc) for two weeks. She will take an asprin a day for 6 months.
We are thankful for all the prayers ofered on Elizabeth's behalf, and especailly for the blessings of our Heavenly Father.
Book recommendation of the day: Dragon Slippers, by Jessica Day George. A simple peasant girl is told to offer herself to a dragon so the local lord's son can rescue her, marry her, and save her family from poverty. But instead she takes matters into her own hands, befriends the dragons, talks her way out of an arrangement with the lord's son, and eventually saves the entire country from ruin.
posted by Rebecca =) | 7:04 PM
|
0 comments
