Surgery It’s OUT!!!

Hi everyone. I’m the friend with the updates. I’ll try to do my best.
I’d first like to say that the surgery went extremely well. We got one update at the midway point to say that the cancer had been fully removed and all was going as planned. Dr. A said it was a good thing they waited the extra couple months for the bone to heal after the break because if he had not the bone would have shattered while he tried to take it out. Scary. The surgeon also said the tumor was seeping out of the pores in the bone, so it appeared to look more like cauliflower. Well, now it’s out!!

More good news!! It looks great. We were worried about the extent of deformities (although that’s a minor matter), but it reeally looks great. It’s swollen and once the swelling goes down it may be smaller than her other arm, but her shoulders are perfectly symmetrical! The plastic surgeon did a pretty sweet job. I think they counted 68 stitches just in the front.

The important thing is that the surgery was a success! Yay!!!
Now… after surgery… The one thing Kelly was worried about was the breathing tube, moreso than the actual surgery, believe it or not. There was a 50% chance she would wake up with the breathing tube in, but the Rosie O’Donnell nurse said she probably wouldn’t even remember because it would only be for a moment. As soon as the anesthesiologist woke her up, they would take it out. Well she wakes up from this massive surgery, breathing tube in place and is actioning best she can to the nurses for them to take it out. These nasty nurses are like oh, your fine, just breathe, we’re going to take an X-ray and then take it out. 15 minutes go by, the poor girl is gagging on a breathing tube that’s not even on, breathing out of one nostril because the other one’s stuffed and she has asthma. Then they give her an 11 inch needle in her neck when they could have used her metaport. Then the nurse pricks herself with the needle and they have to give her an HIV test. It was kind of a nightmare to wake up to. Since there were no beds available in pediatrics, she was stuck on this unfriendly floor. Her mother wasn’t allowed to stay with her. : (

It took almost a day to control the pain. Morphine wasn’t working. Not to mention it’s incredibly itchy. Finally they put her on Fentinyl, which I believe is a hair away from heroine. Kel can’t stand being dependant on drugs. She has control of her dose by pressing a button and she’ll hold out on pressing it until she has to. Ah! About that… when she was on morphine and pressed the button it would give out 3 pushes and you can hear it. When they switched her over to the Fentinyl they forgot to tell her that now it’s not 3, it’s more like 20. Plus it’s stronger, so when she pressed the button, she obviously thought the machine was broken and wouldn’t stop. She was sure her heart was going to explode. Terrifying.

One more complication. Her arm had started to swell, as well as her leg. Dr. Meyer came in to look at it and was concerned. Seeing the concern in his face…I could not imagine...knowing what an infection could mean. They did some tests and their instinct was right. They found a blood clot in her jugular. They immediately put her on Heprin blood thinner. But then Dr. A was worried because it hadn’t been 5 days after surgery and blood thinner could prevent the transplant from healing, so they took her off the Heprin. Of course it was nerve racking knowing that now nothing was being done about the clot. After the 5th day, the clot specialist put her back on blood thinner - two shots a day. Yikes!!!! There still may or may not be clots in her arm. They can’t press hard enough on her arm to get an accurate ultrasound reading.

Most recently, the surgeon felt that the arm was slouching a bit. The arm had slipped out of the socket. He has to lift her arm to snap it back in. OUCH :( but it's getting a lil better every day.

Man, my first two paragraphs were so pleasant… what happened?

It’s hard to put into words how brave and positive Kelly’s been. The first day she was moving her hand in a direction the surgeon said would take a week of physical therapy to accomplish. Even though it hurts, she’ll get up to walk around. I think a nurse trainee said it best. I was outside her room and this girl was so moved by Kelly’s attitude. She said “Kelly is just the best person.” I said, I know. And she said “No, I mean the best person in the whole world.” We never know how we’re going to react in a crisis, but she’s an absolute phenomena. It can be so ridiculously frustrating, but she finds a way to smile. And in a few months we’ll be able to say, yeah, she killed that bitch with a smile. : )