Salivary Gland Ablation, Part 2

Annie had the second half of her salivary gland ablation yesterday.  Fortunately this time she wasn't having crazy seizures beforehand.  We also explained that she was probably too heavily sedated last week since it took her 3 hours to get out of recovery and then another 4 hours after that before she woke up. 

Everything went very smoothly yesterday.  We were really hoping that this time the doctor would be able to get into one of her parotid glands to treat it, but he just wasn't able to.  He explained that the only way to safely treat the parotids is to find the actual teeny tiny hole in the wall of her mouth where the duct from the gland empties into her mouth, then insert his even tinier tube up into the duct in order to get the solution into the gland that will kill it.  Unfortunately, Annie has built up thick flaps of tissue on the walls of her mouth from where she bites her cheeks during seizures.  The doctor said Annie has too much tissue cluttering up the area where the duct opens into her mouth and he just can't access the ducts.  We asked if he could make a cut in the tissues in order to get to the ducts, but I guess that would put her at too great a risk of having the alcohol solution get somewhere other than the duct and the gland which would kill good, normal facial tissues.  His only suggestion for treating the parotids if we feel like she needs them treated, is to have ducts tied off.  We obviously aren't going to even consider doing that until we get her well from these surgeries and see their full effect.

Annie was only in recovery this time about an hour and a half and was then taken to her room on the pulmonology floor.  Our doctor had told us that if we were comfortable, since she had no major complications last week, he would allow us to be discharged later today.  We were extremely excited about that since Annie's hospital room had absolutely no parent bed in it!  Annie did incredibly well all day and at 7pm we started working on getting discharged.  Finally by 11:15pm we were discharged and immediately went to bed at the Ronald McDonald house. 

Annie still has a lot of congestion and thick phlegm, but we're starting to wonder if that's more from a possible cold since her main salivary glands have now all been killed.  Her tongue and chin and cheeks are also so swollen that she's just having a hard time dealing with even the smallest bit of congestion and phlegm.  She slept fabulously through the night on her CPAP, but has required a bit more suctioning today.  We plan to rest today, do our cleaning for the RMH, pack everything up and drive home tomorrow!  I can't wait to get Annie all healed and see really how effective this procedure is going to be for her!  Hopefully she won't have to wear soaking wet bibs everywhere she goes anymore!

Before surgery--our room, even smaller than before with NO parent bed at all!

Before surgery

After surgery

Starting to wake up

The lovely view from our window

We were definitely grateful for a doctor who discharged us early from this room!

Back at the RMH

Napping this afternoon