Surgery results

Praise God from Whom all blessings flow -- mission accomplished! The journey that began during the afternoon of August 13, 2006 is coming to an end as our Ella once again has a full head of hair!!! Yet, we are not able to see it because her head is fully bandaged.

I had a feeling that today was going to be a good day when I woke up, looked outside, and saw that the horrible weather that was predicted for us overnight seemed to have completely missed us. We made it to the hospital in plenty of time and it wasn't long before we were able to speak to our surgery team. In this conversation they told us that the plan was to remove two of the expanders, deflate the third expander, use what they could from the expansions, and then leave in that expander so we could continue expanding. This made sense to us.

Before the surgery Ella was her usual self. This morning her thing was to play with her cats and pretend that they were trying to escape out of the room. Fortunately, she was able to catch them before any escaped!

About the only time that Ella seemed to get anxious was when they came in the room and told her that it was time to go to the OR. She cried as Sarah and the staff took her down to the OR. But once she was there it wasn't long that they were able to get the mask on her and she was soon sleeping.

Shortly after she was in the OR, Jim the nurse came out looking for us. He was looking for our expansion records that we were keeping at home because he wanted to add to the records that they added 75 cc of water to the largest expander in the OR. This was a major expansion considering that we were usually adding only about 15-20 cc at home. We couldn't believe they were able to add that much and wondered what that must look like. Apparently they did this to get as much elasticity as possible in the scalp.

They originally told us that the surgery would only take about an hour. But it wasn't long and an hour was past, then two, and then three. Finally, we got some word that the surgery was going well.

After about 4 hours the surgeon came to talk to us. The first thing that he told us was that all of the expanders were out and that he got the entire area covered. He congratulated us on how well we did with the expansions and said that the aggressive expansions that we did over the weekend were a big reason for today's success.

The surgeon was extremely happy with how everything went. He said that he thought he might be able to do it today but wasn't sure so he didn't want to get our hopes up. But everything went, in his words, "perfectly." We said it was divine intervention and because of all the people praying for us. He said, "Yep, that's what we said in the OR -- her dad's a minister." Then he told us that the timing of the date of the surgery was perfect since next week he would be in Vietnam doing some medical missions. Granted, he would've preferred that the expanders would not have become exposed and he could have waited until after he came back. Yet, no one was complaining.

Ella is now in her room. She is extremely tired and I don't expect any trips to the playroom tonight. She hasn't quite yet caught the joy of the situation. That probably won't come until she's able to look in the mirror and see that her "pink" is all gone and she now has a full head of hair. Having mom comb her full head of hair is something that she's been looking forward to for a long time!

I end this post where I began -- giving praise to our God! We are thankful for his leadings and his faithfulness! Now we continue to pray, as we have in the past, for Ella's continued recovery.