Ashlyn's Ear Surgery March 10, 2011

Ashlyn pulled through her surgery great! It took 3.5 hours to remove the cholesteatoma and it was the biggest one the doctor has ever seen. It went into her mastoid completely. There was no bone left, so he reconstructed the bone of hearing using part of her skull bone. He took a skin graft from her leg to promote quicker healing (he's patented this).

There's a lot of bleeding, but he said this was normal. At the beginning of the surgery, I told God that I trusted him and to give me peace about the surgery. For the most part He did. He said it would take 2.5 to 3 hours, so when it went over 3 hours I got a little worried, but not too bad. Thank you to all the people at work who gave me great Bible verses to read during the surgery. Thank you to all my friends and family for all the prayers. God is good! He said he would probably go back in at the end of the year to do a open up and look to make sure he got it all. Only 2% of his cases he has to go back in, so that tells you how bad it was.

Ashlyn has a surgery bear that had the same surgery, getting the same wrapping on the same ear! Too cute.

Here's Ashlyn after the bandages were taken off the day after surgery. There's an inner "cork" packing and we just put clean cotton balls on a couple of times a day with ear drops.

I think the most painful thing for Ashlyn has been the skin graft on her leg. The heel of her foot also has a bruise because when she woke up from anesthesia, she woke up kicking. She kicked a nurse and they sedated her a little, but I think she might have kicked the bed too causing her heel to be sore and bruised. Poor baby!