Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Bilateral Adrenalectomies

We spent the night prior to surgery in San Francisco. We were up at 4:30, out of the hotel at 5:30 and at the hospital by 6:00. They called us back to prepare at 6:45. As opposed to the last surgery this prep was completely different. Everyone was more relaxed, the anesthesiologist hung out with us, Dr. Duh came by to chat, and the IV wasn't a problem. They rolled her away from us at 7:30. Someone form the hospital checked in with us and gave us updates every hour or so during surgery. At 2:30 Dr. Duh came to find us and tell us how it went while his team finished up with her. He is really great, he acts as though he has all the time in the world to talk. He said it all went well; her adrenals looked like "Cushing's adrenals", inflamed. He also said she had a lobular spleen, nothing to worry about.

In recovery they were giving Alex Morphine that wasn't working and Fentanyl that was. The switched the Morphine to Dilaudid and that helped with the pain.The pediatric floor was full so they put Alex into an overflow of ped's on another floor for the first night. It was nice, because she got a private room and a nurse with only 2 patients. After 24 hours they switched her into a shared room in ped's.

Because of the recent Crohn's flare they brought in the ped's GI team. With the nausea prior to surgery it was hard to gage what was what and they really wanted her to eat. After the first two nights in-patient they told us she could leave once three things happened; she needed to eat something (she had literally not eaten anything in a week besides 3 bread sticks and 10 Ritz crackers), she needed to get off the IV pain meds, and onto only Vicodin, and she needed to poop (that had been a week as well). After 3 nights she had eaten and gotten off the IV, so they let her leave without a bowel movement.

The ride home was interesting. They gave her a Vicodin before we left and called the Rx into the pharmacy at home. That meant we had to race for home to get her next dose. Sunday afternoon traffic was heavy but Brian did his best to drive 80 mph despite it. She was feeling awful by the time we got her meds, but we made it from dose to dose in 4 hours.

On to recovery!
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