Looooooooooong Day

I had Natalie at the hospital at 5:30 am and I am so exhausted already now a little after 6 pm.  It was the same pre-op routine we've been through twice before- a set of vitals, a lot of paperwork in the first room, then to the pre-op waiting room, more paperwork, more verification of who (Natalie), what (shunt revision surgery), where (her head, duh), and why (previous shunt wasn't working correctly).  At 7:30 they took her back to begin surgery.  I took that opportunity to have some breakfast downstairs in the cafeteria and get some milk up to the PICU for her overnight stay.  A little after 10:00 her neurosurgeon came in and got me.  She did really well through the surgery and she was out.  He replaced the shunt and the catheter going into her brain.  The previous one had worn away the brain surrounding the catheter and she had a 5mm (or so) hole where fluid was just leaking out freely every time there was a pressure increase.  He put something over that and sealed up the hole and created a new path for the new catheter and sealed it since not sealing it last time (which is normal) didn't work for her, obviously.  He also tacked down her skin and tried to rough up the area so that it would need to scar down and will hopefully heal back the way it is supposed to be instead of the way it was.

She already had the tube out by the time I went over to the PICU.  She ate a bit from a bottle and did well with that.  We had to leave her flat on the bed for a while.  The neurosurgeon came in and saw her this afternoon and gave his ok for me to pick her up.  I held her and fed her just before I left, she threw up all over me, but I think she was in a bit of pain and the last of her pain medicine had worn off.  The nurse gave her some tylenol and was going to let her calm down a bit before she tried to feed her again.  I am going to have some dinner and then head back to the hospital tonight for a little while.  I need to be home before it gets too late tonight, though, because I am just beat.

He ordered a CT scan on her, and she'll have that tomorrow morning.  As long as everything looks ok with it, she'll be coming home tomorrow.  We'll be back at our house before Lauren's birthday on Sunday!  Yay!