3-23-08 - 8:30 p.m. 

things were a bit rough for a while. The bulge in Chloe's back nearly ruptured through skin.. when we had our pre-op apt on monday, we had to go for immediate blood work to check for infection and CT to determine proximity to the skin and possible causes... turns out, her hip screw toggled itself through her pelvis and burrowed a hole right t hrough it until it came out completely... so there's a trough of hollow and the left side was beginning to do the same .So, new, larger hardware had to be flown in special and she ended up needing a partial hardware exchange... the lower half of the hardware was traded in for improved model. Screws were placed in differen tplaces in the hip and the rods were adjusted to put less levered pressure on the screws for this go around.

To boot, her surgery was supposed to be at 7:30 on Tuesday... since the hardware wouldn't arrive by flight until 9:30 surgery was moved to 12... all eating had to stop at midnight and she could drink until late morning clear liquids... then got a call that surgery was pushed to 2. We arrived at the hospital at 12:30 and discovered it was pushed to 3.. by this time, Chloe was starving, poor thing.

At 3:15 we went into the operative waiting area but didn't get into the OR until almost 5:30'ish. It took an hour and 9 tries to establish 2 IV lines; She was so dehydrated and hungry. Poor baby.

Surgery finished at 8:30 and she was finished with closing up procedures at 9:00. So, almost 4 hours later she was in recovery room... But in recovery, she started dropping her bp (lost more blood than planned and the dehydration didn't help) it was 60/22 and should have been around 90/40 or 50... scary but not overly alarming, I guess. So, she needed a ton of pushed fluids.. Got out of recovery around 1:30 am and into a room just after 2 am. She had a rough bp night and was not responding well to the narcotics... Wednesday was a little better. But Thursday early morning, she snapped out of it and smiled, turned to me and said, "Hi mommy... I love you." She ate this morning and slept less and responded really well to Valium and Tylenol for pain relief. So, they let us go at around 2:00... she can't sit or stand for 3 weeks. no pt, no nothing. It was a much bigger surgery than we planned but Chloe is a tough little angel (angel with titanium rods... I mean wings. :)