Mike and I finally welcomed our new daughter, Sarah, into the world. Sarah was born on Tuesday August 7, 2007 with CF. After birth she appeared to be fine and came up to the newborn nursery with me.
After not pooping in the first 24 hours like healthy newborns do, they took her into the NICU to re-evaluate her. At that time they decided to go through a series of non-surgical procedures. None of the things they tried worked. The only option was to do surgery.
On Thursday, August 9, she had her first surgery. They found extensive mucus and maconium in her bowels. They had to remove a 5 cm section of her bowels. She was a real trooper and they were very pleased to see how stable she was after surgery. Unlike the experience we had with Will our 4 1/2 year old, we were told that she'd have to stay in the hospital for the entire 6 week period between the sectioning of her bowels and the re-sectioning of them once she's had a chance to heal.
Since the cut in her bowel is so close to her stomach they predict she won't be able to tolerate her feeds. With this in mind they wouldn't send her home between surgeries since she'd have to be on an IV for eating and they won't send her home on an IV. Mike and I were relieved because that was one of the hardest part of dealing with Will's surgery.
This morning at 9:00am we got a call and they said they needed to go back in for another surgery. This was something we didn't expect. We know she'd have to have surgery to re-section her bowels, but that wasn't supposed to be for 6 weeks. We rushed to the hospital and spoke with the surgeon.
She had said that during the first surgery she tried to manipulate her bowels to massage the maconium out before having to cut them. She worked for a few hours without success, so she cut them. During that surgery Sarah's body temp went way down so they had warm her up. I think she (the surgeon) started to worry about how long Sarah had been out during the first surgery, and maybe should close her up and hope that a particular area of the bowel that looked a little questionable would heal on it's own. So they sewed her up and made sure she warmed up.
Now that things hadn't gone as well as they thought after surgery, the surgeon thought that questionable part she saw may not be doing well and she wanted to go in. She warned us that this surgery may end up being too much for her to handle and we should be prepared for her to not make it. That was unbelievably devastating but we knew it was her only option!
After two hours of surgery the fellow from the NICU came out and told us that Sarah was doing well and they didn't have to make any more cuts!! The problem was coming from fluid that had started to fill her stomach cavity. We were sooooooooooo happy.
She's not totally out of the woods yet, but she survived the surgery and that was enough for us to really believe miracles do still happen.
So..............now we wait to see how she does after this surgery. Please keep her in your prayers. We need your support.
Christina, Mike and the entire Kolassa/McCue/Sturgeon families
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