Friday, September 5, 2008

Crazy Pre-Op Day....

Whew.... today was crazy...The good news is that we are back in our room at the RMD house after 10hrs at the hospital- and Teagan wasn't admitted!

We made it over to Seattle yesterday and got checked in to the Ronald McDonald house. This trip we managed to get a big room in the newer house up the road from the hospital and it is awesome! I didn't even know what the RMD house was before we had Teagan, and now its such a life saver when you're away from home for so long! So next time you drive thru Mc D's- drop a few coins in the RMD charities box... they do wonderful things!

Now for our day... The plan was to check in at 9am to be admitted and have all of our pre-op testing done. I didn't understand why they wanted to admit her 5 days early for us to just sit in the hospital room around all the germs, etc... and be miserable! So after a few hours and a few discussions with the dr. and various nurses they decided that we will come back on monday to meet with the surgeon and then discuss admission. (yay!) Before they had decided to let us go, we had been sent to our hospital room on the floor to wait... I just left Teagan in the stroller and then held her. I didn't even want to touch that bed because I was determined to keep her out of there this weekend!

We went to the cardiac clinic for a chest x-ray, ekg, and vitals. Teagan is officially 12lbs 8oz and her sats were reading in the upper 70s! Then we headed over to the pass clinic to meet with anesthesia and wait some more. There's talk that we might not have to show up for admission until the day of surgery and if thats the case, they'll give Teag gas to put her to sleep before they poke her at all! (my first choice of course!) If they admit her monday, they will probably start an iv that night in the hospital room... :(

Our last stop of the day was up to the lab for bloodwork. This is the appointment that I most dread! I wasn't too anxious though because Teagan usually does really well with the heel poke thing. So we got called back, the guy did his thing and 4 vials later we were out of there without one cry!

We got back to the room to finally let Teagan nap and eat around 4 when my phone rang. The nurse said that Teag's potassium levels were extremely high on the lab results and we needed to come back and re-do the labs. She said that sometimes when they draw from the heel the potassium readings are off/high because the squeezing of the heel causes the platelets to break and release potassium giving a false high reading. So to avoid this they needed to draw from Teagans arm just like they do for adults... :( The nurse practitioner was nice enough to meet us downstairs and put some lidocaine gel on both of her arms to numb her up before hand since they don't do that in the lab. So we got the gel on her and waited around 15min. for it to work then went back for the draw. The lab tech banded her arm and tried twice to get it and couldn't... Teagan was really really upset so I told him that we wanted someone else and to stop. Trent and I went over to the Giraffe wing to get some sweeties for her and calm her down and then went back to the lab to try again. The new tech looked at her arm and tried to see a vein and couldn't find one, so he told us he'd have to go in through her hand (not numbed). He got it after a few minutes and our little trooper made it ok. She was really upset for awhile but managed to crack a smile as we made it back to our room. She got a badge for being so brave and its so fitting,"hero!"

Teagan is fed and asleep now and I'm waiting on a phone call from the nurse to see how the lab results came back. If they're still really high, then we'll probably be heading back over there but we're just hoping that it was the heel poke that threw off the results. If all is good then we get to spend the weekend here at the room with her relaxing and enjoying every moment. Tommorrow we have to start washing her with the Chlorohexidine wash once a day and putting antibiotic ointment in her nose 2x's per day (to kill any bacteria) until surgery day.

Thats all for now, I'll update more when the lab results are in. I'm amazed over and over again how well Teagan recovers from all the things she has to endure. Even after our crazy and hectic day, and after all the labs and poking- she's still smiling! God made her out of some pretty tough stuff, and she truly is my hero!

Here's Teagan with her lidocaine gel patches on her arms, and then after the final lab with her 'hero' badge.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm so thankful you are finished with the pre-op stuff! Trent, Susie and Teagan, you are all heroes. I can't imagine how hard all this must be! God is with you and I pray throughout the day and night for Him to give you comfort, peace and lots of love. Here's a big hug! I love you! Mom