Post Op Scare...To a Good End

What a day! First off I have to give it to Children's Hospital of Denver for taking care of everything in a way which makes us feel like we are the only ones here. Also, our surgeon, Dr. Allen is a complete God send. He is one of those Doctors who doesn't really know he is a doctor. Everyone can see is love for these kids by just looking at how he treats them.

Dr. Allen told us the surgery went really well. Everything went as planned including the ear piercing we asked him to do. Yeah, that's right, we asked him to pierce Abigail's ears when she was under. They look beautiful. It will be hard to mistake her for a boy now.

Now for the scare of a lifetime...She came out of her sleep ok, but she was showing that she was in pain so they began by giving her a little morphine. This is very common, and was done in the PACU where they can monitor her very closely. She was still showing she was in pain so they continued with more morphine. Again, they were monitoring her closely and she was not reacting in any bad ways. I don't know how many doses they gave her but through her continuing to show pain they completely exhausted the morphine treatment. She then calmed down enough for them to release her from the PACU and send her upstairs to the post-op floor. She continued to do a little better. She faded in and out of being asleep and awake. During one of her awake moments Heather tried to give her some apple juice. When Heather did this it made Abby upset which ended up sending her into a respiratory arrest; she couldn't breath or essentially she stopped breathing. I have been through a lot of difficult times in my life, but there is nothing that compares to the feeling I had during this time. Abby turned completely blue. Heather and our Awesome nurse, Ellen, reacted quickly and put Abby on her bed. Abigail continued not to breath. By this time Ellen had yelled for help and ripped the "bag mask" off the wall and put it to Abby's face. A bag mask is what you see on TV where they are squeezing the bag in order to breath for people who cannot do it on their own. My heart really began to pop out of my chest when they told someone to call the core team. A core team is a team that is specialized in rehabilitating people. Nurses and doctors began pooring into our room. Everyone was asking what happened, doctors were giving orders and everyone was trying to help. It was very chaotic to me, but they had everything down like clockwork and were on top of everything. With my heart all buy stopped, Abby began to come back after about 30 seconds. This seems like a short amount of time, but by now she had not taken a breath in over a minute and a half by herself. This also seems like a short amount of time, but while this was happening my concept of time had come to a screeching halt. It felt like hours had gone by. To give a happy ending to all of this, she came "back to" with a loud cry. The ENT (Ear, Nose, and Throat) team, who had also been called was now in the room and began to take care of everything. Dr. Allen suctioned out her mouth and Abby began to fall back asleep. This is, by far, the worst feeling I have ever had, but I thank God for watching over our Abigail and providing her with an extra Angel to be there to help out. She has spent the rest of the day being fairly restless, but finally she was able to fall asleep for about 30 minutes. When she woke up, big brother Colton came to visit and was able to make her smile and laugh. Finally my heart came out of my stomach as I saw this. The bond those two kids have is also something from God. As soon as she saw him, it was like she felt no pain. He is the greatest big brother Abigail could ever ask for. We are truly blessed.

We want to thank everyone for their prayers and thoughts. Yes, this was very scary, but we are past it and have moved on to recovery. Our God is so great and we love Him for what He has provided us. I am even more thankful for God giving me such a strong and caring wife, a beautiful and resilient daughter, and a son who has a heart of gold. Furthermore, God has provided us with a hospital staff who reacted in such a way that saved our little one. How can one not praise a God who has given us so much. We are just so thankful. We love you all and again, thank you for your thoughts and prayers.