Surgery

Sorry I didn't get a chance to post last night. It was pretty late when I left the hospital and the PC's at RMH were all being used.  Penelope's surgery was running behind so it was almost 430 when we took her down to the OR. The procedure was supposed to take 1.5-2 hours, but ended up being 2.5. She had a bilateral inguinal hernia repair.  Penelope's left side was a sliding hernia, which was unexpected. So it took considerably longer to repair.  They were closing the right inguinal canal as a precaution, however, when the opened the right it had already herniated, so it, too, took longer to repair than expected. So there are two incisions on her lower abdomen, one for each inguinal canal.

On the upside her gtube was able to be placed with an endoscope, which we were told was unlikely because of her size. So she has a PEG tube now and hopefully in the coming months we can get a 'button' placed, which would look similar to the valve on a beach ball. So it would be flush with the skin.  This feeding tube placement is only needed because Penelope doesn't have the strength to take all of her feedings by  mouth. As soon as she is taking 100% of her feedings by mouth AND having appropriate weight gain she can have it removed. The doctors anticipate she will have it out before her first birthday!

Post-op was tough for her. She was in a lot of pain with the hernias being far more invasive than anticipated. Around 915 last night she got startled by the blood pressure cuff and pulled her legs in really fast, which was incredibly painful for her. So we had a rough 15 minutes until she could have more morphine. When I called at 1am they said she had been sleeping soundly and had not needed more morphine. Same report when I called at 4am. So she is just taking Tylenol for the pain at this point.

She just got her first feeding since 6am yesterday. She was a very hungry girl. She was too tired to try bottle feeding so I got my first attempt using the PEG. So far so good. She fell asleep as soon as the milk started going in her belly.  This weekend I will get trained on using a feeding pump for overnights. I figure if we are going to get stuck having a PEG then we will put her on a continuous feeding pump for overnight so she sleeps all night.