Surgery Day - November 9th 2004

Sorry I didn't get the chance to post this yesterday. =)

So to pick up where we left off, we have been admitted to the hospital and are awaiting the dreaded surgery.

Monday night she was declared "NPO" which means she couldn't have anything to eat or drink after a certain time so that there wouldn't be any complications during her surgery. Hopefully someone out there knows what NPO stands for, because all I ever hear is "Nothing by mouth" which doesn't correlate to NPO. =)

As I sit here and type this, more memories start coming back. I remember she was scheduled for surgery around a certain time, I'm thinking it was to be around 10 AM or NOON, but then we go word that it was delayed an hour or so. Now remember, Isabella was about 18 months at this time and she wasn't being allowed to eat or drink anything. Try telling a 18 month old child that they can't have anything to eat when they are starving since they haven't eaten since they went to bed last night. Needless to say, she wasn't a happy camper. I remember begging the RN to just let her have a tad bit of oatmeal or something like that since her surgery was delayed. He finally agreed and then of course, Murphy's law..... as soon as she had something to eat, 10 minutes later we got the word that she was to head upstairs for surgery. I felt really bad at that moment, because I didn't know what would happen now that she had something in her stomach.
All of us went upstairs to the second floor of Banner Desert hospital to go to pre-op. By everyone I mean, David's mom and step-dad, David's sister Carla and brother Eric, and my step-mother. Only David and I were allowed in the pre-op area to get Isabella ready for surgery. The nurses explained everything that would be going on with her and asked us if we had any questions. We waited for the surgeon to come by and he went over everything again and then they carried our little girl away. We walked back to the waiting area where our family was waiting for us. I being the emotional person that I am, cried from the moment she was out of site. I didn't want her to see me cry, because then she would think there was something wrong. If I remember correctly they said the surgery would take a couple hours. So there we all were, sitting in the waiting area scared because we knew nothing. We did not know what type of cancer she had yet, if it had spread to other places, we didn't even know if Isabella was going to beat it. But we had to believe that what ever the news, we were going to fight. Just two days prior, we had no clue this is where we would all be today.

We all anxiously waited for the surgeon to come out and tell us Isabella made it through the surgery fine. Finally we saw Dr. Janik come through the doors and he explain what happened during the surgery and what he saw. I still remember one of us asking how big the tumor was, and he said it was the size of a large grapefruit. All of us just stared at each other wondering how a tumor that size could be inside of her. He went on to explain that they took a piece of the tumor out that were going to biopsy and they did the bone aspiration on the back side of her hips to test the bone marrow. He also placed what is called a broviac in her chest that will be used to administer chemo treatments as well as draw blood from. The line was placed in a vein right next to her heart so that when medications were administered, they would travel through the blood faster than if it was with an IV in the arm. This broviac line was permanent as well, we had to learn how to clean it every day after we were released from the hospital.

Dr. Janik gave us the okay to head back to recovery to see her. The moment I saw her, I just broke down. Seeing her with so many tubes and the monitors was more than I expected and could handle. I couldn't stay for very long looking at her like that, so I headed back to the waiting area. When she was okay to leave recovery, she was back in her room. Which like I said on my previous post, was our home away from home for the entire week.

That night David and I shacked up in the room that could barely fit us. I don't think I got much sleep listening to the heart monitor beat every second. Every time the alarm went off I shot up and went to check on her.

Until next time.... =) i will post the next days' event after I let Isabella watch Superman right now.... ahhh, how lucky we are to have her here wanting to watch a movie with me.........