The End

Emily is now fully recovered from her surgery and her pectus is now a only a memory.

Surgery Day is almost here

Praying for health these last couple of days and an uncomplicated and uneventful surgery come Tuesday.

Surgery is scheduled

Emily is scheduled to have her bar taken out on December 22nd. It is hard to believe that a year and a half has already gone by.

Update

Last month Emily went back to see Dr. Hermann. He plans on scheduling surgery to remove her bar over Christmas break. All is going well. He was very pleased. He has decided to make an incision into the original scar instead of making incisions on the sides of her chest. After surgery she got Staph in a half of her scar and so it thicker and the other side. He will open her up on that side and try to minimize the scar to match the other side.

I have requested copied of Emily's medical records from her hospital stay so that we have record of everything. I also took a gamble and called Radiology and asked if I could get copies of Emily's x-rays and they are going to make a disk copy of them for me to pick up. I thought that it would be kind of neat to have copies of her before and after pictures of her chest.

Emily's recovery is going well. She doesn't complain about pain in the incision area but rather she is dealing with pain and aching on her sides. The surgeon was puzzled when we told him this. We are guessing that because the bar is attached to her rib cage on both sides that there isn't any flexibility with the ribs. Normally your rib cage naturally moves with you but for Emily the bar kind of acts like an internal cast and immobilizes her rib cage. This issue never crossed our minds but makes so much sense. I am hoping that over time this won't be such an issue. 

Back at school

Emily went back to school on Friday for the first time. She did well and had fun too. It is so hard to believe that she had surgery less than three weeks ago and she is already doing so well. I guess it is true that kids bounce back fast. Emily does get frustrated that she can't be active and do everything that she did before surgery. 

Emily's Post Op Visit

Today Emily had her post-op visit. The surgeon took her bandages off and was very pleased with what her chest looked like. She will go back in 3 months for another follow-up visit. Until then she will have physical limitations so that she can continue to heal. The surgeon also said that Emily needed to gain some weight. We will have to work on that. 

Dr. Hermann's handywork

Emily showing off her new chest. Dr. Hermann did a wonderful job. The incision is about 1 1/2 inches shorter than expected. 

We got home but with a not so fun homecoming

I was not able to update much in the hospital due to poor internet connections. Dr. Hermann let Emily go home on Saturday night. To back up a bit on Thursday they took the epidural out. It was a rough go at first but Emily was a trooper. The pain is under control with medication but Emily is still dealing with alot of nausea. This morning she threw up several times. She still needs alot of help getting around. Recovery is going to be slow. Last night when we got home it was very short lived.  Within about 15 minutes we were back in the car and on our way up to Medical City again. Megan went into anaphylaxis shock. We are thinking it was a reaction to everyone eating at Churches Chicken. Megan did not eat anything but it was caused by being touched after others ate. We are thinking that they cook with peanut oil. It was so scary. We got to the hospital and within about 5 minutes they had Megan hooked up to the heart monitor and had an IV started. We were discharged early this morning. She is okay now. Oh how fragile life is. 

I have been having a hard time getting a good internet connection so it has been hard to update. Yesterday was really a rough day. They stopped the epidural and started Morphin and Emily threw up. She had a hard time controlling the pain and so they had to restart the epideral. Today they took out the epidural. No turning back this time. At some point it has to come out. She is one several medications to control the pain. She is still dealing with a great deal of nausea. 

Tomorrow will be a big day

Tomorrow is going to be a big day. Emily's epideral will be coming out tomorrow. She will experience the real pain from her surgery for the first time. I am praying and hoping that the pain will be able to be well managed. Tomorrow the surgeon will also be removing the drain from Emily's chest. I feel bad with all that Emily has had to go through in the past couple of days. It has been really tough for her. I am anxious about how she will deal with the pain tomorrow. The road to recovery is tough. I am so glad that I did not know what we were in for before all of this began. I am trying hard to focus on down the road when this is all past us.