Lucy's recovery from surgery is going very well. For the first 2 1/2 days, she pretty much slept the days away in a morphine-induced sleep. The goal of her doctors is to keep her as quiet as possible until Tuesday, when we will do a Contrast Study to see if her surgical site is leaking at all. So, she is back on a ventilator, has a chest tube in at her surgical site and a central line into her neck, for easy blood draws and to get her IV fluids. She is on straight IV's (no food) and is still quite puffy from the surgery and all of the fluids that she is getting.
This morning was the first time she really woke up and was alert. Although she can't make any sounds or move very much at the moment, her little eyes are alert and follow us around her bedside and she seemed pretty comfortable while she was awake. It is tough to see her in this state, as she was just beginning to interact and coo when we talked to her before the surgery She's had a number of visitors from the Graduate NICU - nurses who took care of her want to check in on her progress. Her surgical team all came by today to check on her before the weekend and all were very pleased with her progress and the success of the surgery. Although they haven't told us these, I suspect that her gap was one of the longer ones that they have successfully connected at this hospital.
So, until Tuesday, we are planning to keep her quiet and comfortable and not cause anymore trauma to her surgical site. The surgeons said that if she had a major leak in her esophagus, it would already be apparent in her chest tube output, so we do not anticipate that. The outcome of Tuesday will either be that she is healed and can start to have some tubes removed and gradually begin to eat or that the ends have not grown together yet and she will need more time to heal. We are obviously praying for the first outcome.
THANK YOU for your kind words after her surgery. We are so grateful to have the support system that we have.
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