THE DAY BEFORE MY LIP SURGERY AT DR. COX'S OFFICE...HAPPY I'M GETTING THIS LATHAM DEVICE OUT OF MY MOUTH
Anna had surgery to repair her lip and gum on Wednesday, August 20th at T.C. Thompson Children's Hospital. The surgery was successful and Dr. Sargent was able to get a great repair on Anna's lip and gum, but Anna had a limited amount of skin to use to get a final repair on the nose. Dr. Sargent will need to perform an additional surgery in approximately a year to lengthen the columnella (skin from the tip of the nose to the lip) to complete Anna's repair. The skin that had to be sewn was very tight. We felt like Dr. Sargent did a great job with the limited amount of skin to work with.
We stayed in the hospital until Friday afternoon and were able to take Anna back to the hotel to stay in the area until Monday, August 25, for her suture removal. My mother was able to stay the weekend with me and Anna so that Mark and his mom were able to bring Samuel back to Knoxville so that Anna could get the rest she needed to recover. Anna was very agitated by even the slightest sounds so we had to keep things very quiet for her over the weekend. Our parents have been a great help this past week...we are grateful for the help both of our mothers have given! Our church family has been such a blessing, too...bringing meals, coming to clean our house, or just sitting with Samuel to give me time to tend to Anna. How grateful we are for everyone's care and concern for our baby girl!
Anna rested well over the weekend due to her taking Tylenol/Codeine that the doctors prescribed, but she did not start taking her milk back until the stitches were removed on Monday. She drank Bubble Gum Pedialyte for 5 days and began to take milk back early this week. We had to take her to the Emergency Room on Sunday night because her temperature was above 102 degrees but they ran tests to make sure she was okay before Monday (since they had to put her back to sleep for a few minutes for the stitch removal). There was no sign of infection but they did determine that she was anemic. We addressed this with her pediatrician this past week.
She has especially not eaten well the last two days (Thursday, August 28 and Friday, August 29). We tried to mix her milk with Pedialyte to get her to take liquids, but she was just not interested in eating the last few days. She was refusing juice and straight Pedialyte. PLEASE CONTINUE TO PRAY THAT SHE WILL HAVE A DESIRE TO EAT. She had lost 6 ounces as of Tuesday, August 26. I took her back to the pediatrician today,Friday, August 29, and we determined she has thrush in her mouth which is causing her discomfort and ,therefore, no desire to eat. She has eaten small amounts since this afternoon and we are giving her medication to clear this up, so we hope she does better in a few days. She had not had a bowel movement since Tuesday, August 19 and this concerned us, but she finally had one today. I think that helped her to feel some relief due to her having a lot of gas the last few days. She had lost 7 more ounces as of today so we hope to keep her weight stable since she has lost almost a pound.
Her lip is healing and we will be going back to Dr. Sargent's office to have them look at her on Monday, September 8. The dermabond they applied over the area where the stitches were is peeling off and it looks uncomfortable, but all in all she seems to be dealing well with the lip and the pain. I think it looks worse than it actually feels now that we have gotten past the first few days. We had to clean a couple of spots that had some infection above her lip last night-we called Dr. Sargent to make sure that this was normal. He said that there can be a spot that gets infected where he placed some disolvable sutures on Monday, so we are watching it closely.
DAY OF THE SUTURE REMOVAL...
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