Post-Op 6 hours

It's been a roller-coaster ride since surgery...here's what's going on:

To make sure she has as little pain as possible, they turn up the juice on the epidural a lot during the surgery. Early in recovery, she was not breathing well because she was so sedated, so they had to come off the epidural quite a bit to get her to O2 saturation back up (it had dropped below 90%...normal is 95-100%). The result, though, turned into excruciating pain. When I was allowed to go back to see her in recovery, she had just started crying and screaming in pain...of course, I was crying right there with her. She would say, "Mama, it hurts so bad...I can't breathe!" It completely broke my heart, and I immediately sent word to the waiting room to pray.

In the meantime, the anesthesiologist bumped her epidural back up and gave her morphine. It took less than 10 minutes for it to kick in and knock her completely out, but it seemed like an eternity. She continued on for the next few hours, waking (but groggy) occasionally and talking but not in pain. Then, about 4 hours post-op her blood pressure and her O2 sat dropped again, so they had to back off the epidural again. Once again, terrible pain until they could get it increased again, which took about 30 minutes but seemed like a couple of hours.

She has a temp of 101, but the doctor assures us this is not unusual for this big of a surgery...probably just inflammation. He says we shouldn't worry at this point.

So, I started this post about 4:30 p.m., and now it's 6:30. Now, she's doing amazingly well. I think we've found the magic number for the epidural level.

Dr. Berch came in a few minutes ago and said regulating the pain is pretty much trial and error. I don't (and she doesn't) much care for the error part. Those of you who are parents understand, I'm sure.

Dr. Berch also said that Saturday or Sunday we will start out with oral pain medication in the morning then ease her off the epidural and see how she tolerates it. If she doesn't, we will increase the epidural again and try again the next day.

We've started breathing treatments, and her O2 sat is staying around 99. Right now she has her iPod in hand, checking out what's going on on Facebook while eating McDonald's French Fries and drinking Sprite. Wow! We've come a long way, and I know it's only because of the Lord's mercy I am witnessing this.

By the way, her chest is beautiful. She's pretty amazed with it, too...keeps touching it. I'll try to post some after pics as soon as she has all the monitors and stuff detached.

Thanks again for all your prayers and sweet comments. God is good...all the time.