Thursday 11 March 2010

Urethra re-implantation surgery!

On Tuesday Olivia went in for her urethra re-implantation surgery. She was very brave. Her operation wasn't scheduled until 12:00 noon so she was starving by the time she went in. She gave herself the sleeping gas and was out quick. The doctors gave her an epidural for pain and morphine for when she woke up.

The operation was three hours-- which took a bit longer than planned due to some complications. Apparently the reason she started getting UTI's after her operation in England was because one of the plastic bits that was clamped down on her urethra to stop the reflux, came off. This allowed the reflux to resume and caused a lot of scar tissue to build up around the plastic bits. The dr. had to remove the plastic and then operate with scar tissue build up which wasn't easy. As a result of the scar tissue he put stints in her urethra's to keep them open and the urine moving. These will come out in 6 weeks.

Currently Olivia has random tubes coming out of her stomach. A catheter, and the usual IV wires on her arms. She has to wear a diaper which is mortifying for a 6 year old. And because of the catheter and stints her bladder goes into spasms which are extremely painful for her to bear even with the morphine.
Due to the complications Olivia had to stay in the hospital for 5 days and is on recovery at home for 6 weeks. Stan has been off from work to help but it has been tricky juggling the hospital/ operation and getting a new (used) car (read previous post), and then all the usuals like taking care of the kids, preschool drop offs and pick ups and dinner etc... (note: Mary told me the other day that my dinner was so bad Jesus wouldn't even like it--I acted sad so I could go in the kitchen and laugh to myself!) Anyway, we finally found a car that will work and we pick it up at the end of the week.
Overall Olivia has been ok through it all with visits from the happy doctors (they blow up balloons and give you stick on tattoos etc...), the hospital school teacher, who gave her a packet of work for year 1 kids. She came back the next day and Olivia's home work wasn't done (oops) so she gave us an extra day. Olivia also has a TV/Movie/ Video game console in her room which has just about every game, or movie you can think of. And she has been showered with visits from friends and emails from family. She told me yesterday that "it doesn't count as a visit (someone seeing her) if they don't bring a present." She is a pretty good negotiator, I need to take some lessons before my family comes to visit!

3 comments:

~adelle said...

Man. That is one rough surgery! I hope the recovery goes well for her. It sounds so icky to me. Hope all your stuff gets replaced/fixed too. It is tricky to balance all that life stuff. Good thing you have Stan helping.

Good luck!!

Sidra said...

Wow! Poor girl. We hope that her recovery goes OK and that you guys have lots of help :) Oh, and it is good to hear that you can laugh when your kids say things like that, especially when you have so many other things that could be causing stress. Laughter is, after all, the best medicine.

Amanda said...

What a mess. I am so glad she is doing alright. She is too young to have to deal with this. I am so sorry. Please give the girl a kiss for me. Also, Millie drew her a picture and I have lost your address; can you email it to me?
We will keep praying for her!