Session Thirty: Making the Crooked Places Straight, Part Eleven
As we approached the timing for our daughter’s rescheduled growing rods surgery, we quickly realized that it would once again be postponed.
Our girl had been battling sickness for several days. It was likely just a common cold, but she had developed some new symptoms which my mommy intuition knew was likely a bacterial infection. As was our protocol, we dropped a culture at the lab and the 24-hour preliminary showed heavy growth of a typical-for-her bacterial infection. Our girl was going on a 10-day course of antibiotics, which confirmed the spinal surgery was canceled.
Our daughter was happy to not miss out on the final days of the school year and once again, we trusted in God’s timing. Our Lord’s timing would push surgery out to August 15th. That day holds a special significance in our Catholic faith. It’s a holy day of obligation honoring the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Mother of our Lord.
We felt tremendous peace as the summer days flew by. We held on to the hope of divine healing seeing as we didn’t want our daughter to have to endure such a major surgery. Yet, when the time came, we felt prepared to handle this new challenge. Our daughter, however, was quite nervous about the surgery. Her anxiety levels continued to escalate in the pre-operative area. She was a mess of tears as they rolled her away from us, it was heart-wrenching for Mommy. Every ounce of me wanted to jump in the hospital bed with her and comfort her until she was sedated, but I had to put on a fake smile and assure her that she was OK and that we would see her soon.
Praise the Lord that the lady from Child Life came out to find us in the waiting room to tell us that after they turned the corner, she started playing music from the Trolls movie (her current on-repeat movie of choice) and our daughter started dancing and singing and that she even had the entire surgical team dancing in the OR. Our girl! She spreads joy everywhere she goes! It certainly helped ease the sting in my heart to know she peacefully went under anesthesia. Now we just had to wait!
We were told the surgery would be around eight hours. However, the surgery took twelve long, long hours. When the surgeon finally came out to us in the waiting room, he shared how he had placed ten screws into her spine. Three on each side of her upper spine and two on her lower spine. The process was very lengthy due to her delicate spine. Cadaver bone was needed to support the anchors, so our daughter received help from two donors. (Thank you and God bless those who choose organ and tissue donation.) The titanium growing rods were then anchored to the screws. He was pleased with the outcome of the surgery, and they only had one minor setback when the scalpel cut into the thin covering of the spinal cord. Because of the dural tear, she would need to lay flat during recovery until the following afternoon.
What a relief! Surgery day was one of the longest days of our lives. The chance of complications is fairly high, and our daughter came out of it with a small dural tear. We knew our daughter had been wrapped in prayer!
The surgeon also shared the before and after x-rays of our daughter’s reinforced spine. The difference was tremendous! We couldn’t wait to be reunited with our daughter as she was transferred to an inpatient room. After such a long day, we were terribly exhausted, but sleep eluded us. Our daughter had a really difficult night. It took considerable time to manage her intense pain levels. It was heartbreaking to see her writhing in pain and crying out. I felt so helpless. The bladder foley catheter was also a painful experience and she repeatedly cried, "take it out." But the nurse regretfully informed us that it had to stay in through the night. Oh, our broken hearts.
Yet, even though it was a hard day, it was still a good day. We had known for many years that growing rods were in our daughter’s future. The rods had been successfully anchored to her spine. The next step was the long recovery… stay tuned.
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