Eye Surgery Report

Tuesday, July 11th, 2006 – Eye surgery day.

It’s 1AM and Kelly and I just got home. The surgery started at 2PM and went well. We won’t know if the surgery was a success or not for a couple of weeks.

After the surgery is a different story. Abby was under so much anesthesia that she started to spell a lot. She wasn’t remembering to breathe on her own. They were pretty bad spells too. The nurses had to “bag” her quite a few times to get her heart rate back up. Finally, Abby was given some anti-narcotic medicine, which literally reverses the affects the anesthesia was having on Abby. Abby went from being free of pain and knocked out, to in a lot of pain and wide awake immediately. It was crazy. This was obviously better than her spelling but it was terrible to hear her scream. To make matters worse, the anti narcotic medicine didn’t really work. She only lasted a short while with her heart rate up, so the docs put her back on the CPAP ventilator to help her breathe. Not the little nasal cannula, the big CPAP. Abby hates the CPAP! She was miserable.

Kelly finally put her finger in her mouth to serve as a pacifier and it worked to soothe her for the time being. She stayed on the CPAP machine until 10PM. Abby had an IV put in to get some nutrients during the surgery and the nurse was able to take that out around 11PM and she started feeding again around 11:30PM. Only 10 cc’s of milk to start with, but she’ll be back to full feeds (34 cc’s) by tomorrow afternoon.

When we left, Abby seemed relatively calm and getting back to normal. Her eyes are very puffy and blood shot and have a lot of goop coming out of them. She looks like she just went 12 rounds in a boxing ring. Let’s hope the surgery worked. We do NOT want to do that again.

Thanks everybody for your positive thoughts and prayers.