Upper jaw surgery today was very successful. Two titanium plates with screws to go along with them fixed her bite and appears to have corrected her nose as well. We wont really be able to tell if the nose will need more work down the road until all of the swelling goes down. They kept her in the post-op recovery for almost two hours, which is an hour over their normal. We were hoping that this was because they were taking her chest tubes out. This was not the case. The surgery pain meds along with the anesthesia kept her more out of it than they wanted her to be in order to leave the post-op. They waited until she could respond to commands again before sending her back up to her normal room. Except for a few times today, SB has either been very out of it or sleeping deeply. She really is a super trooper because other than a couple brief moments she has been comfortable only on regular pain meds (no narcotics). There were 2 reasons that they didnt take out the chest tubes today. They didnt take it out during surgery or right after because she needed to be more awake for a successful removal. They didnt take it out this afternoon because by the time she was awake enough and the doctor was able to come see her it was already late in the afternoon. There is a very small risk for air to get in the space between the lung and the chest wall (pneumothorax) during the removal of a chest tube and the doctor wanted to be sure he had anyone and everyone available if need be. I guess they like to save these procedures for the morning when there appears to be the largest number of available doctors. So we are pretty confident that the chest tubes will come out tomorrow morning since her fluid output levels have been below 150ml for 2 days now. Tomorrow is also the last day for the local pain pump from Mondays surgery. If I had to guess they will probably remove the pain pump at the same time as the chest tubes, but I dont really have confirmation on that. Shes been a little itchy recently, especially on her upper chest and wrists. The nurses have been good about applying some anti-itch cream. She hasnt eaten much today because she has been sleeping a lot, but she has had her protein fluid packets and some apple sauce. Hopefully she will be more with it tomorrow without being in additional pain so that she can continue to eat, get stronger, and get healthier. Tomorrow is her birthday! The nurses are going to come decorate her room even more than it already is. How amazing are they!? While they are decorating SB will be going for a wheel chair ride around the hospital and outside. While she is outside we are going to try one more time to get the timing right so Sara Bee can see her puppy. This time we will be sure to ask her if she needs to use the restroom right before we go outside. SB is sleeping right now and has been for awhile. We will see how long that will last tonight. Regardless, something tells me that tomorrow is going to be a good day. Happy Birthday Sara Beth!
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 03:57:14 +0000
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