Stage 2 -- 3/14/07 -- Surgery Day

PRE-Surgery

Photos

As happened with Stage 1, the hospital suggested that we show-up almost 3 hours before surgery, but Dr Reinisch said to call him that morning at 9 to confirm the schedule and he told us we wouldn’t be needed until 11 (for a 12:15 surgery time). Luckily, we still allowed extra time because the hospital parking lot was full and we had to park in their overflow lot, which took extra time. We still managed to arrive a little before 11.

After checking-in and a short wait, we were brought back for Belle to have her vitals checked by a nurse-practicener. Then we went into another waiting room where they were making crafts with the kids. Belle got to make a little notebook with colored paper. By 12:00 they were ready for us and we were taken to a pre-op room where they gave her happy juice and we had a chance to meet the doctors and ask any last questions. We tucked her into the gurney with both her prayer shawl blanket (made by our church) and her favorite bunny (made by us). They took her away for surgery around 12:30 after the happy juice had “kicked-in” and she was laughing and singing “Jesus loves me” with the same nurse who sang it with her last time.



We had been told to expect the surgery to take just a couple hours, but it apparently took them a while to get going (and I guess they went through a support staff change which slowed things down) so we didn’t get to see her again in recovery until after 5pm (4.5 hours later). When we arrived in recovery her eyes were just starting to flutter open. She wasn’t bandaged this time, and her whole face wasn’t nearly as swollen this time. Of course her ear itself was swollen, blue in some spots and stitched-up. It’s kind-of a hard adjustment because the ear had been healed and now it’s like starting over, but of course it should heal even better and faster this time since it was a less evasive surgery.

After stage 1 Belle had thrown-up just a couple times. Unfortunately, Belle’s reaction to anesthesia was even worse this time. She threw-up several times at the hospital, including all across the hospital lobby while we were waiting with the nurse for hubby to bring the van from the overflow parking lot – opps. She also threw-up a couple more times when we got her back to the hotel, but by morning she was feeling much better.

Dr R said he wasn’t able to get her ear lobe adjusted as well as he would have liked (it was becoming too aggravated/blue at that point so he stopped), but that we’ll just have to wait and see when the swelling goes down. Her tragus wasn’t adjusted as much as I expected, but that might just be the swelling too. Dr R went back in at the top of her ear to remove all the remaining hair follicles from the previous skin graft site, so we won’t need to go back in April for skin graft after all. He also took some fat from her belly and added it to her cheek where she had an indentation in front of her ear. He mentioned that doing that (the fat transplant) once also probably wouldn’t be enough, but again we’ll wait and see.