Last Surgery

The docs let us take Zoe to our home away from home last Wednesday for a short hiatus. She was doing so well, walking, taking all her meds with no problem, and Henry and I had taken over on much of her daily care because we feel better being more involved, and it's less scary if mommy and daddy can do it instead of the nurses. It felt so good to take her away from all of this necessary chaos. For as much healing takes place inside of hospitals, they can also be quite toxic. It's almost impossible to have uninterrupted rest, there is trauma happening sometimes in the bed right next to you, and for a child the constant barrage of white coats speaking about you in a language that you don't understand invokes nothing but terror. I got to rescue Zoe from all of this for four whole days! We went grocery shopping, to the bookstore, to the Japanese gardens (Zoe loved feeding the Koi), and just hung out. Zoe rested, ate, rested some more, and ate some more. Lovely.It was incredibly difficult to bring her back to it all this morning, but I'm so comforted with the hopeful, although not guaranteed knowledge that this should be her last surgery...at this point anyway.

Dr. Sekhar will be attempting to remove the rest of her tumor from the left side of her head this time. Dr. Mirza will also be going in to perform another bone graft on her spine. The surgery is expected to run 8-10 hours, and she will go directly to MRI and CT afterwards. Zoe went into surgery without any meds to relax her, and she did amazingly well. Sadly, she is getting used to the pre-op routine. We read to her while waiting for surgery, and this time she just lied there with her eyes closed and listened, only getting upset when a doctor or nurse came by. It's going to be a long day. We'll post how she did tomorrow.

Colleen