Session Thirty-One: Making the Crooked Places Straight, Part Twelve

Session Thirty-One: Making the Crooked Places Straight, Part Twelve

Our daughter had just gone through a twelve-hour surgery to fuse MAGEC rods to her spine for scoliosis treatment. She had a rough night with pain management, so we were praying for a restful day for our girl. After sleeping the entire morning, increased meds, and getting the terribly uncomfortable Foley catheter removed, our girl seemed more peaceful. Yet, the road to recovery was going to be difficult.

We were told to expect discharge after four days, but our girl was showing little signs of improvement. Sitting up was too painful, she was still requiring strong narcotics for pain. By the third day, we were beginning to question if she would even be discharged after a week. Though it was painful for her, the time had come to start pushing her recovery. We made her spend more time sitting up, including strolls around the hospital in a wheelchair. Every attempt to get her to stand was thwarted. She had little to no strength and no desire to even try. Where was our girl’s feisty determination? We were so accustomed to her warrior spirit. She typically surprised everyone with her speedy recoveries, but not this time.

Once her surgeon removed the clonidine patch, our daughter seemed more mentally aware. We decided the best medicine was to give her some sunshine and fresh air, so we wheeled her outside to the healing gardens, which was so encouraging for all of us. Finally, we began to see her lively personality returning and her recovery began to make larger strides.

On the fifth day, we were finally discharged. We were going home with a walker to help support our daughter’s efforts to walk, along with an entire bag full of icepacks. Now that she was off the heavy pain meds, ice was her new best friend in managing the pain. We had no idea how she was going to be able to tolerate sitting in the car seat for the 600-mile ride home. But we were all up for the challenge. We just wanted to be home!

She lasted thirty minutes before the tears began to flow. We stopped often so she could lay down on our cot, but ultimately, the only way we could cover any miles was for Mommy to hold her in the back seat. We didn’t like it, we knew it wasn’t safe, but it was the only way to get our girl home…so we said our prayers and finally, at midnight, we pulled into our driveway. What a whirlwind the past week had been!

Being home was exactly what our girl needed to kickstart her recovery. After bucking the entire time in the hospital, our girl found the strength to walk to the bathroom using the walker. Just a couple of days later and she was taking steps without the walker.

She was not happy about missing her first day of school, but more healing was needed before she could make that step. It took our daughter about two weeks to relearn how to walk. It was as if her center of gravity had changed and she had to find her bearings. It was four weeks from the day of her surgery that our daughter started her first day of third grade (about three weeks after school officially began). She started with just half days for about a week before building up her strength. It took longer than expected, and to be honest, we felt unprepared for how hard those first few days would be for our daughter, but we were grateful to our prayer warriors who were continually lifting our family in prayer.

God is faithful and His presence has been all the difference on our journey. God gives us joy despite our external circumstances. We praise Him through the storms, on the peaks and in the valleys, God is good. God is love. If God is for us, who can stand against us?!

Our daughter is standing on His promises! Her face shines with God's love, and her joy in adversity speaks loud and proud of God's presence and His unexplainable peace.

Now that she was fully established on the road to recovery, we were full of anticipation to see how this surgery would improve her life. On our final post in Making the Crooked Places Straight, we’ll bring the story to the present and share how our daughter has adjusted to life with growing rods.