Rough, Rough Surgery Day....or at least AFTER surgery day....

So, I wrote this out yesterday, and was almost done when the post magically disappeared.  Lovely.  I was too disheartened to rewrite it, so just posted pictures to Facebook instead.  =P  Right now my lovely little lady is having herself a good nap (she's been resting, but very fitfully all day), and I would go to sleep myself if I knew I wouldn't be interrupted every 15 seconds.  Or half an hour.  Or whatever inbetween there might be reality.  I think that after I started writing this there was a 45 minute lapse in interruptions - guess I SHOULD'VE taken that nap.  =P  I DID fall asleep earlier today.  Sitting on Ruby's wheelchair by her bed, with my hand on her back.  Until the nurse came a knockin' on the door and woke disoriented me up.  I'm tired.  

Playing with silly Daddy-o in the rec room

But!  Without further adieu...onto yesterday's happenings...probably followed by today's happenings.  If this doesn't mysteriously disappear again.  =P 



"I like my hat!"

Okay, so we got to the hospital yesterday morning with a rather cheerful gal.  She talked some to the nurses - normally she goes into shut-down mode, so her talking surprised some of them - one lady even commented on how Ruby was actually talking this time.  Yes, she does talk.  Just not apparently very much at the hospital.  =O  Anyhow, things were going fantastically.  We had play time in the rec room.  We had worship.  Ruby had her finger prick...okay, that didn't go so great.  You'da thunk they were killing her with the scream she let out.  =O  After that, she talked to Isaac, Jadelyn, and Gram on the phone.  Then, we went down to the OR "holding tank".  Ruby continued to do fantastically - visiting with the nurses, being a silly goose with her surgery hat, you know...stuff like that.  She picked out a whitish/yellow color for her cast, but the nurse talked her out of it since that color gets dirty so easily.  Ruby settled on pink.  PINK, pink.  BRIGHT pink.  But you know, I have to let her have some choices in life.  =O  The nurse gave her some "happy juice" which made her so relaxed last time that she could hardly hold her head up.  This time, I didn't notice any for-sure effect from the medication.  When it got closer to the time to head back to the OR, I saw Ruby looking worried.  I asked her if she wanted to pray one more time.  She said, "I want you to stay with me".  Way to tear your Mommy's heart out, Rubes.  Soon after that, they wheeled her away.  Ruby screamed bloody murder down the hall and around the corner.  We left the "holding tank" and heard her for a little in the other hall.  Not too happy.  I think she told me that she kept screaming until they put her to sleep.  Or something.  I'm tired.  Did I mention that, yet?  In fact, I'm falling asleep at the keyboard.  At 2:15 in the afternoon.  Oh, boy.

Anyhow...surgery went better than last time, even.  The bone graft took spelendidly and so they didn't need to use any screws or pins again.  Which means we don't have to come back and get them out, which was Ruby's big fear of surgery.  Yee-haw!  =) 



"My IV hurts, Mommy."

We got to see Ruby again about 5 hours after they wheeled her away.  She looked rough, like last time, but it soon became apparent that she felt even rougher than last time.  Not too long after being back in our room, David noticed that one of her poisitioning pillows was wet.  Lovely.  We both smelled it.  It didn't smell of urine, so we figured the catheter wasn't leaking.  We were worried that it was an epidural leak like I had heard about on a support group on Facebook.  The first shift nurse put a diaper in the hole to see if the catheter was leaking or not.  Not.  Dr. Montgomery, the anesthegiologist, came by and checked out the inside of her cast as far as he could reach.  He determined that it wasn't wet.  So Ruby continued her epidural meds, but quite often was in a lot of pain, still.  Later, during another turn with the night nurse, we discovered ANOTHER big wet spot on a positioning pillow.  The nurse called Dr. Montgomery, who could come in at 9pm.  In the meantime, the epidural was shut off and Ruby began just getting morphine (I think) through her IV.


Doosey of a cast

Around 4pm or so, Ruby was feeling quite good and decided that she was feeling up to visitors.  David and I foolishly went along and asked Gram to bring Isaac and Jadelyn up when they woke up from their nap.  By the time they got here, Ruby wasn't feeling so hot and was very tired.  Isaac let me know early on in their visit that he had been praying for Ruby.  Melts my heart.  =)  Isaac was goofing around at some point and it made Ruby want to laugh, but it hurts her when she laughs, so she didn't.  She told me that we have to "be careful" about funny stuff.  Soon after they got here, Ms. Hannah and Ms. Judy from church showed up with supper for us - awesome!  So the kiddos and Daddy-o ate, we all visited, and Ruby?  Well, she went to sleep in the midst of it all.  They all left around 7:45pm, and I kept Ruby awake waiting for Dr. Montgomery, figuring she'd do better with him if she stayed awake rather than being woken up from her drugged sleep.  It was a struggle to keep that gal awake, for sure!  Second shift nurse, Rhonda, called Dr. Montgomery up and got Ruby's pain meds increased, as she was consistently rating her pain as an 8 or 10 on a scale of 10.  Dr. Montgomery finally came around 9:20pm.  Said that he figured in the OR that the epidural had gotten bumped when putting the cast on.  Now, I don't understand why if he figured that is what happened, why didn't he draw the conclusion of a leaking epidural sooner, and why did he not do something to fix Ruby's pain problem sooner?  AH!!!!  Anyways, supposedly her cast didn't get soaked with the epidural leak, so should be okay and not need a new cast.

Checkin' in on Rubes

Last night we had some "good" periods and some bad periods.  All related to pain management.  She is supposed to hit her button every 6 minutes for pain medication, but as you can imagine, that doesn't happen so well when you're asleep.  =P  And I can't hit it for her, so we relied on the nurses to come in and hit it.  It happened sometimes, and other times I don't think it did (I was sleeping, too =O). 

Today, Ruby has been in lots of pain.  Pretty consistently rating it still as an 8 or 10.  Dozing most of the day, but only for a few minutes at a time (which actually came in handy so I could have her push her button), but now she's been sleeping for nearly 2 hours.  Poor, exhausted girl.  And the morphine is making her scared.  She doesn't know what she's scared of, she's just scared.  She's scared sometimes just laying in bed with me right by her, sometimes she's scared if I have to leave her for a few minutes to go to the bathroom or to go grab some food from the parent lounge.  Someone came to fix the part of her cast around her pottying area, as the hard shell was touching her skin.  She screamed and screamed and screamed (though not NEAR as loud as normal, as her chest is still not cleared up.)  It didn't make logical sense.  I kept telling her that her medicine is confusing her, and that explanation seemed to help a minute amount.  =P  When I ask her to tell me what face she is feeling, she started showing me one face for her "scared" and one for her hip.  And she's a 6 on the scared scale she made up.  Rotten.

Her oxygen has also gotten as low as 80, and her heart rate got to well over 170 when they were finally taking the epidural out.  One tube down...4 to go.  Few more days of this mess and then we'll go home and recuperate...=)

2 More Nights....

Two more nights at home until the next hospital round.  One more day at home.  I thought I wasn't going to get nervous this time around, but it's finally starting.  Good grief...I'm about to turn into a mess!  =O

Ruby is handling it all like a champ.  She tells people about how her next cast will go down to her toes on both legs and how it will have a "stick" in the middle.  She tells me that she doesn't want all the "tubes" again.  Hoping her good attitude will continue through the morning on Wednesday when she gets her blood drawn, and when we have to put her into a gown (since this doggone cast makes it so she can't dress herself). 

I thought I was brave and strong now.  I thought wrong.

Mom of Multiples Introduction....

Getting "Married"  =)

My husband and I had always wanted kids.  In fact, I've looked back at things we wrote at pre-marital counseling and found that we both wrote that we wanted twins.  Crazy.  Well, a few years into our marriage, we decided we were "ready" for kids.  But just weren't able to conceive.  Enter a very frustrating year.  Finally went to see a doctor, who prescribed Clomid, but the lowest dose.  When we went to pick it up from the pharmacy, the pharmacist had a little consultation with us about how this could increase our odds of having a multiple pregnancy.  I told the pharmacist that our doctor had told us this, but told us that our chances were very slim since we were on such a low dose.

A month later, I went back to the doctor.  They did a pregnancy test (which I didn't know at the time...I was naive, I suppose), but it came back negative.  A few days later, I took a test at home (with my husband present - they wouldn't let him back in the room at the doctor's office because he showed up late) and it was positive!  When we were just a few weeks along we had an ultrasound that let us know we were having twins.  The doctor was teary.  My husband was teary, and I just said, "I don't know how to take care of one baby - how am I going to take care of two?!?!?!"  Ha.

Later in the pregnancy, my sister, who is an ultrasound technician, did an ultrasound and found a cyst on "Baby B"'s brain.  She told us it would probably go away, but to tell our doctor.  So we did.  We were referred to a maternal-fetal specialist, as it was a "high-risk" pregnancy.  Like my sister predicted, the cyst went away, and "Baby B" was fine.  But during one of our many, MANY appointments with the specialists, we were told that the blood flow to our little girl, "Baby A", was stopping and that she had really low amniotic fluid, and due to the blood-flow issues, she would probably not survive.  In fact, the doctor told us that after they were born, they could perform tests on our little girl to see what caused her death.  And then proceeded to walk out of the room, taking a cell phone call from "Walter" (funny how we can imagine such little things) and acting like nothing was wrong.  My husband and I sat in shock.  We went home.  We cried (or at least I did =O).  We prayed.  Other people prayed.  A pastor and some others came to our house and annointed me and prayed for our little girl.  Next time we went back to the specialist, we were told that "Baby A" still had low amiotic fluid, but the blood-flow issue was resolved.  The doctor told us that he didn't know what we were doing, but to keep doing it.  I told him we were praying.  ;)

So, my twins, Ruby and Isaac, were born on Dec. 12, 2006. Big kiddos now. =O And what do you know? We, who were unable to conceive, received a BIG surprise when later we found out we were unexpectedly expecting ANOTHER little girl, and our little stinker Jadelyn is nearly 3 now. ;)