Recovery

McKinley right after being wheeled back into the room after her 10 hour surgery

We finally have our precious baby girl back in our arms again. Well, not exactly in our arms, we can't hold her yet, but at least she's near our arms. Yesterday was a LONG day. We walked her to the OR around 8am, handed her to the anaesthesiologist at 8:40am and saw her again around 10pm. I think she was actually in surgery for just over 10 hours. That's a long time. Surprisingly, we were very calm. I'm sure it was because we had so many people praying for her and us, that we could feel God's arms around us, and we were calm. We went to lunch, went shopping, watched You Tube videos and had a nice day together. The hard part came when she was wheeled back into our room. I was prepared for what I would see, and all in all she looked pretty good, but it's never easy for a mother to see her child in that state. McKinley was heavily sedated with two IV's, one in her hand and one in her foot, an NG tube in and 3 drains including a catheter.  She was pale, and would occasionally wake up with a hoarse cry and big fat tears would roll down her face. I found myself feeling light headed and needing to sit down. Not because I was queasy from anything I saw, but because seeing my baby girl in such pain simply made me want to throw up.  I've felt that way a few times today but I'm slowly getting more used to it. I'm thankful that they're able to keep her so sedated on Dilated (sp?), Valium (sp?), and now Bendryl.  The meds makes her so itchy that she's literally given herself a black eye! The plan was for me to spend the night with her by myself last night but thankfully Tony noticed real quick that that may have been a bit much for me and decided to stay and keep me company. I also thought I would go home today and take a shower and see Brooks, but I can't pull myself away from her. I want to be here the few times that she decides to open her eyes so that she'll see her mommy.  I know she's scared.  She doesn't know what's going on or why she hurts so badly.  I'm sure all she wants is to be held, or to play with her taggy blanket. But she can't, not just yet, she has a lot of healing to do.
Having said all that, it appears that her surgeries are going to be a total success! I have never witnessed a more powerful testament to the power of prayer than with our little girl. I'm not sure why God has decided to say yes to our prayers for the time being, but I am thankful that he has. The surgeons expected to find a complex set of issues when they opened McKinley up yesterday. In a nutshell, they found almost everything the way it was supposed to be, just not hooked up properly.  So rather than needing to reconstruct a bunch of stuff, they mostly just needed to hook it up. All of their concerns with future incontinence and poor bowel function are pretty much out the window now.  There's a very good chance that after this surgery McKinley's lower half could function like a normal child's! And that is something that we will certainly pray for.
The only complication they ran into was that there was not enough of her lower bowel to pull through to her rectum and divert to a new colostomy.  So they had to put in an ileostomy, which is higher up in the intestine. For the average person this shouldn't be a problem, but because McKinley only has 1 kidney, and the one she has is sick, she needs to maintain a much higher fluid intake than the average person. It's very possible that she will not be able to maintain the fluid levels that are needed to keep her kidney functioning in which case she may need to stay in the hospital longer on IV fluids, come home with a PICC line and IV fluids or worse case scenario, have the ileostomy taken down and start using her rectum before it's fully healed.  Which could open her up to infection and could be very painful. So we are praying that she can maintain her fluid levels and let her rectum heal for a couple of months before she needs to use it.
Right now I am praying for a speedier than normal recovery. McKinley is way tougher than me so I don't know if I can handle seeing her like this for much longer!!  I know that they're going to have to back off the pain meds at some point, and she's going to have to become more awake and aware of what's going on, and I'm nervous for when that time comes.  I just hope that God lays his healing hands on her and continues the miracles that he's been working on her and heals her quickly!
The amount of people that are praying for her is truly overwhelming. Thank you to all of you, God hears your prayers and he is answering them so please keep it up!!  Love from the Miller Family to you....