Surgery This Tuesday

I am dreading Jillian’s surgery on Tuesday, and at the same time, it can’t come fast enough. Friday was a particularly difficult evening. She fell asleep between 7-8pm, but then she was only asleep a short time. She spit-up/threw up and we couldn’t get her to go back to sleep until about 12:30 am. Her stomach kept making strange sounds and she looked like she was in a lot of pain. The last few days it appears obvious to us that something is really wrong. The feeding thing keeps getting more difficult. Lately, I’ve had to answer different developmental questionnaires about Jillian. One of the common questions is “Does your baby try to hold the bottle during feedings?” The real answer: “No, when she sees her bottle she gags, cries, shakes her head to say “no,” or tries to bat it away with her hands. I think if she actually liked eating and it wasn’t so painful she might actually try to hold her bottle.”



Anyway, the hope is that things will be easier after Jillian heals from her surgery. We are scheduled to check in at 9:15 am on Tuesday (Jan. 27th). Then the surgery is a supposed to start at 11:15am and last about 3 ½ hours. The surgeon typically runs a little behind schedule so I’ll be surprised if it starts on time. I’m guessing the whole day is going to be extremely nerve racking as we wait and wait to hear how Jillian is faring.


As you can imagine, with any surgery the absolute precision that is necessary and how the body responds to the changes are the crucial components. Jillian is undergoing three major surgical procedures: fundoplication (wrapping of the top of the stomach around the esophagus to eliminate acid reflux), repair of a hiatal hernia (her stomach is pushing up through her diaphragm as her diaphragm became detached from her esophagus), and installing a feeding tube through her stomach. With the fundoplication the stomach has to be wrapped at just the right tightness to avoid other major complications like retching or the stomach empting too rapidly. In the repair of the hiatal hernia, we are hoping that her Gore-Tex patch that was used to close her diaphragm last year is still attached properly and that her diaphragm can be properly re-attached to her esophagus. And of course, we are hoping that she won’t have excessive scarring or any infections or other complications. One other concern is that she won’t have any respiratory distress during or after surgery. Last month when she had the endoscopy procedure, she was so relaxed from the anesthesia that it took longer than usual to get her to breathe again on her own.


Bryan is going to have the difficult job of keeping me calm for the entire day. We can never adequately express how grateful we are for the many people who have already said many prayers for Jillian. As you can imagine, we are hoping that many will again pray for her well-being as she undergoes this second surgery. She will be in the hospital for about a week after surgery to recover. We will try to keep you as up-to-date on her recovery as possible.
________________________


We have added new photos and videos to our Flickr site (http://www.flickr.com/photos/3apples). The December 2008 and January 2009 sets have new photos.