Veptr Surgery

About three years ago Sara started going the The Shriners Hospital in Greenville. We would go every four months and they would xray her back each time. Each time her scoliosis was worse. Her Dr said to keep using her scoli jackt and wait see how things went. Things got worse. She is too young and too small for the spinal fusion surgery. The Dr referred her to a Dr in Columbia. Her scoliosis was close to 90 degrees and starting to squish her left lung. There was no more room for it to grow. He said our options were do nothing or to do a surgery to place a veptr (verticle expandable prosthetic titanium rib). The purpose of the veptr is too hold up, sort of prop up, the ribcage to allow room for the lung to grow. We decided to do the surgery rather than do nothing at all. The surgery was scheduled for December 16th, 2009, at Richland Children's Hospital in Columbia.

We arrived in Columbia on the 15th and spent the night. We didn't sleep much but I spent the night snuggling with Sara and she laughed and giggled so much. It was wonderful. We got to the hospital at 5am, she went back to surgery around 8am. It was so hard seeing them take my baby away and not being able to be with her. They got done around 12 and we were told all went well we could see her in Recovery soon. "Soon" came and went, and we never heard a word. I knew something was wrong and went back to recovery and was told the doctor would be out soon. So two hours after surgery a dr comes to tell us that when she went to recovery they removed her breathing tube and she was struggling to breathe so they sedated her and had to reintubate her so she could breathe. Jason had gone to get us some food, and another dr came and got me into recovery to see her.

They tell you your child has this tube and that Seeing her that way was the hardest thing ever. Knowing if they took that breathing tube out she wouldn't breathe. I sat there by her head and petted her and talked to her. She was still sedated and it was the most pitiful I have ever seen her. They finally moved her up to PICU and over the next few days weened from the tube to bipap to nasal oxygen to breathing on her own. She got moved to a regular room on her birthday, she stayed there for a few days and was finally released for home on Christmas Eve. J left that morning and I rode with her in the ambulance.
The holidays were hard and busy but we were happy to be home and back with Logan.

We had a follow up appointment and all seemed well. Then she seemed to be in a lot of pain and was running a fever. Then one of her insicions started bleeding and oozing, Iknew it was infection and we went to Columbia again. She was admitted into the hospital again January 8th 2010. They did surgery that night to clean out as much infection as they could. They discovered that the infection had traveledall the way up the rod on the right side so they removed that rod. The surgery went well and it was back to PICU for two days, then a regular room for two days. They put a PICC line in and sent her home on IV antibiotics three times daily for a month. The site is all cleared up now and looking good.