Out of Surgery!

It's been a long and tiring day with Annie getting out of recovery just an hour ago--around 8:30pm--but I wanted to post about how her surgery went this evening since people have been thinking about her and praying for her today.

Annie went back to the OR at 3:00 this afternoon, and was out of recovery 5 1/2 hours later.  The orthopedic surgeon came to talk to me after the surgery and he said that everything went well.  He said the infection wasn't quite as bad as he had expected from what he saw on the sonogram images.  He was able to remove about 30cc of pus (in addition to the 30cc he removed during the aspiration yesterday). 

The surgeon also had to remove about half of the cadaver bone grafts that were placed during her spinal fusion two months ago.  These bone grafts were placed to help the bones of the spine all fuse together, but several of them had not fused yet and were at risk of harboring bacteria, so they had to be removed.  Most of those segments were from the more heavily-infected area in her lower back--where her curve had been the least severe.  When asked if her spine would still successfully continue to fuse without those grafts, he didn't seem to think it would be too big of a problem.  If we can get her infection under control and keep the hardware in her back, then it won't really matter that those bone grafts are missing.

The surgeon said that all her tissues looked very healthy in there, so he says there is no need for a second surgery this week!  If her tissues had looked unhealthy and damaged, he would have done a second surgery, but fortunately, Annie's tissues looked good.  Antibiotics were placed directly into the surgical site to help treat remaining infection locally.

Annie's incision for this procedure was the same as before, running from her neck to her bottom.  She has a drain coming out of her back like she did before, but instead of it staying in for just a day or two like last time, the drain will stay in much longer this time to better allow the infected fluids to drain out of her body.


Annie received one unit of blood during the procedure, and then another unit of blood in recovery when her blood pressure starting dropping again. But as soon as she woke up in recovery and came off CPAP, her O2 sats stayed at 100% on room air! Her pain seems fairly well managed for now with morphine she got in the OR, but she'll transition to oral meds overnight tonight.  We will also try to get some pedialyte in her overnight and try to transition her back to her formula very slowly tomorrow. 

Once Annie's fevers are finally down, she'll go back to the OR to get a central line placed so she can receive her IV meds for the next 12 months.  The orthopedist said that she should be good to go home probably this weekend, but he isn't fully aware of the GI issues that have to be sorted out first.  So hopefully we'll get to see the GI tomorrow and figure out how to deal with the problems with her colon. 

And tomorrow will be a very happy day when Justin finally gets home from his business trip!  He has been out of town since Saturday, so he's definitely looking forward to seeing Annie, and I'm looking forward to getting a turn to sleep at home!

Thank you so much for all the prayers and concern for Annie today.  It's touching to know that she is in your thoughts and is so loved by so many people.  We are feeling optimistic today.  We still have a very long road ahead of us with recovery from this second back surgery and IV meds for a year, but we are taking one day at a time and feeling so grateful and blessed that today's procedure went smoothly.