So, we had to be at St. Joseph's Hospital this morning at 5:45 am. Boy, are we tired! She is now back in the OR and they just got started. They will call us in a few minutes to let us know how much surgery it will take (less severe, or more severe). I will post more when we find out. This was the first time they gave her the IV before putting her under, so she was a little scared with that, but they numbed the area before giving it (and even that didn't hurt). She didn't feel a thing. They gave her some silly medicine for the first time and she got really silly. She couldn't even talk...she just kept laughing and it got to the point where she could barely keep her eyes open before they took her back. She was so silly!
1st UPDATE: It was deeper back than he expected, but he said since he has to go back further, he might be able to fix some of the hearing while he's back there. He will have to do a partial ear drum reconstruction and may be able to use the skin from her ear instead of a skin graft from her leg, but will not know until he does it. So, she'll be in longer than we hoped, but we leave everything in God's hands. We pray for Ashlyn as she goes under and we pray for the doctor to have steady hands and his gift of medicine to know what to do. Will update more when we get the next phone call!
2nd Update: There was a new
cholesteatoma that had reformed from the ear drum to the eustachian tube to down deep and back around to the ear drum. He took out the bones of hearing he had put in a year and a half ago since it was on that and took more skull bone to reform the bones of hearing again. He reconstructed her ear drum and was able to use ear skin to do. He had to open up her whole ear again from the back (basically cut her whole ear off to get in there). This means three months of not getting wet again and repacking every two weeks. He thinks her ear drum won't collapse this time since there was air back in her ear and he also thinks her hearing will improve more. Not the news we were hoping for since this will mean a hard recovery ahead of us, but God is good and he will make sure she gets better.
3rd Update: We are in recovery room now, and of course she wanted food as soon as she started coming to. She's currently eating broccoli & cheese soup and drinking gatorade. She's such a trooper. The nurse says that about 90% of patients that get these type of surgeries get sick to their stomach because it's dealing with the inner ear, but this is Ashlyn's 3rd surgery and she's never gotten sick. See the new pictures at the end of her in the recovery room. They are making us only stay in post op for 2 hours this time instead of 3 since she's always been good with her post ops. We're going to drive home afterwards so that we can be back home and with Kaylyn too.
4th Update: We made it home a little after 4:00 pm. Ashlyn did pretty good in the car and I kept trying to stay awake. We stopped about four times for restroom breaks because she had all the IV fluid and drank two gatorades before we left the hospital. She also had another full meal of fish, green beans, and rice that we grabbed when we left the hospital. Then we ate dinner at 5:30 pm and she ate all of that too! Her ear started bleeding around 6:00 pm (what I mean by starting to bleed is that the blood started soaking through the bandage some). Going to put a towel down on her bed for her to sleep tonight. We can take the outer bandage off tomorrow and that's when we start to do the ear drops three times a day and place a clean cotton balls in her ear on top of the ear packing. She's taking amoxicillan three times a day for five days and they're the big capsules. I got so mad at Jason when I saw he didn't check the pills and they gave us the adult capsules, but I tried it with Ashlyn and she was able to swallow after three attempts. Awesome! Good thing we came home though, cause Kaylyn had a lot of homework and studying to do. It is now 7:30 and we are done with everything and getting the girls ready for bed. Soon thereafter, I will be going to bed too since I can barely keep my eyes open :-) Ashlyn's kind of upset though since it ended up being the more difficult surgery because that means she won't be able to join CCA's swim team this year. It's a good thing we did the summer swim team so she at least got that.
To see info on Ashlyn's 1st Cholesteatoma surgery, click
here.
To see info on Ashlyn's 2nd Cholesteatoma surgery, click
here.
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| Ashlyn in the pre-op room |
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| In the Holding room |
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| Ashlyn & Dr. Farrior |
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| Before silly medicine |
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| After Silly medicine |
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| In Post Op |
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| Eating an entire bowl of broccoli & cheese soup |
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