In fairly short order, Dr. B The Thoracic Surgeon came out to say he was finished with his part, and it went well. He figured Dr. C. would be along in about an hour, and showing himself to be as efficient as ever, Dr. C. was out just shy of the hour. He only took discs T6-T10 because he couldn’t reach T4 or T5, but that isn’t problematic because 1) he got the most important discs in the apex of the curve and 2) he can still take T4 and T5 on Monday. He said that he was very pleased at how the lumbar was looking, and that he’d actually remarked in surgery about how straight it was looking. Some time later we got the call that Girl child was in recovery, had come out of the anesthesia just fine, and was currently sleeping. We were waiting on an ICU bed at that point, so she let us come see her just as a friend of ours called to say he’d arrived with lunch for us. We watched her long enough to be satisfied that our little Sleeping Beauty was doing ok enough for us to take a break, then we went downstairs and ate lunch with T. The break was very nice.
When we got back to the recovery room, Girl Child was just starting to wake up. She looked good, but unfortunately she was in a lot of pain. Pretty much everything hurt. And given she’s been through 2 thoracotomies (opening of the chest, considered one of the most painful operative procedures and one of the more challenging ones to recover from), 2 rib removals, and 10 vertebral disc removals in the span of 4 days, it’s no wonder. They gave her extra valium, and before drifting off to sleep, she mentioned her shoulder blade hurt. I hoped that meant that the vertebra that had curved behind that shoulder blade had moved some.
From there began our holding pattern for an ICU bed. She’d been in recovery as of 11:55, and before all was said and done, we didn’t get an official room until 7:30. That time was filled with pain management issues and sleeping once the pain was controlled enough. At one point, she mentioned she didn’t have her stars to look at; she’d become really good about using that technique to focus her mind away from the pain. Child Life brought some other things, but they just weren’t the same. In the grand scheme of things, it was actually quieter in recovery without all the myriad alarms going off on everyone’s monitor for everyone else, so when her pain was controlled, Girl Child got better sleep than she had in ICU. But pain control was an issue a lot of the time. I can’t tell you how hard it is to watch your child suffer, especially knowing she’s not yet finished with things that are going to hurt her, and possibly hurt her more. Nurses K. and P. were really sweet, apologizing for the delays in getting us a room and getting her slushies and anything else she needed . She actually ate quite a lot of slushy, which was more than she’d eaten in several days. Before heading to our room, we asked for another so she could take her colace with it.
When we did get moved to a room, it was actually to the same unit we’d been on this morning, just two doors down. Because of the high patient census, they’d turned a few regular rooms into ICU rooms, and our nurse the previous night had said she’d hoped we’d get one of those since it would mean we could stay in it after we moved from needing intensive care. I sent DH home for another night to try to sleep off the remains of his cold. Unfortunately, the next several hours were marked with more pain. It was hard to find a comfortable position because of the new incision and pain from the rib removal, and we weren’t staying ahead of the pain curve. Nurse J. and I talked about options, because Girl Child had already been bumped up to the max allowed dose per hour of dilaudid. I resolved to set a timer for a longer interval than her pain pump allowed, because the pain pump would max out her hour dose within three presses timed 8 minutes apart. But if I spaced her out to 20-30 minutes, she’d have more constant pain control. She also added some tylenol on top of everything, and I actually had hope that it would work for her when 20 minutes later she woke up, smiled her usual smile and said, “Hi Mommy!” She said her pain level was a 1, which she hadn’t reported at all while in the hospital, and I’m not sure the last time she reported it at home with her back pain, either. Unfortunately it was a short lived reprieve as after the next roll, she complained of pain where the rib used to be and where the drain tube is currently. An attending doc from the surgical team suggested a lidocain pain patch near the area of the incision, and Nurse J. set out making that happen. The pain coupled with the GI discomfort from all the meds messing with her GI tract, I figured we were in for a long night….
