Future hindsight

Something I wanted to blog about is the experience we are having with Mckenzie and her procedure and future surgery.  My hope in blogging about this is that one day I can look back and see that everything worked out just fine.  Right now things seem unknown and scary but we're trying to keep a positive attitude about it.  Luckily Mckenzie is a healthy girl and she's been growing and developing normally.  She's actually ahead of the curve on her vocabulary.  In the end I hope that this is just a trial that will come to an end in a few months and we'll look back and see how blessed we were.

Here's Mckenzie's issue (caution, graphic language used):  When she was born we noticed that her vagina and anus were close together, like closer than normal.  The skin between her vagina and anus is very tight.  Her pediatrician (Dr. Bradford) recommended that we keep an eye on it and make sure she doesn't ever get too constipated.  Since that could possibly lead to her tearing that skin and bleeding.  Mckenzie also has a skin tag in her anus but that doesn't seem to cause any problems.  

Since Mckenzie was born we've been aware of the issue but were told, by Dr. Bradford, that it would most likely resolve on its own.  At Mckenzie's 18 month check up Dr. Bradford told me about some new pediatric surgeons that she recommended Mckenzie seeing.  She said that these surgeons would be able to give us a better idea of the possible complications Mckenzie can have from her abnormality.  

I took Mckenzie to see Dr. Klima about a month ago and he examined her.  His recommendation was that we have a pelvic and abdominal x-ray taken and get a spinal ultrasound for Mckenzie.  Also he wanted to do an EUA (exam under anesthesia).  The x-ray's were normal except that there seemed to be a little too much poop in Mckenzie's bowels so she's been on a laxative for 2 weeks.  Her spinal ultrasound was also normal.  I'm grateful for this because kids with abnormalities such as Mckenzie's often have other associated bowel or spinal problems.  Luckily this isn't the case for her.  

We had Mckenzie's EUA completed yesterday at St Luke's Children's Hospital in Boise.  Here's how the day went:  We woke up Mckenzie at 5:30am to be at the hospital at 6am.  She wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything that morning.  She was so happy when I woke her up.  I picked up her sleepy body and she turned to look at me and said "mommy?" and then gave me a huge hug.

Mckenzie was quite happy having the attention of both mommy and daddy that morning.  She was all smiles while we checked into the hospital.

 After we got checked in we were brought back to the pre-op room.  They took her vitals and we changed her into a hospital gown.  She was happy watching Caillou on the TV.  It was about an hour of waiting and having different people come talk to us.  Such as the nurse, anesthesiologist, and Dr. Klima (the surgeon).

She was mostly happy, unless the nurse or someone walked in then she got nervous and wanted to be held.  She did love that her little bed had a pillow.  She loves pillows.

Then the time came for her to go back to the OR.  I gowned up and held her as we walked back, Justin had to go straight to the waiting room because they only allowed one person to come with Mckenzie.  I held her while they got the nitrous oxide all ready to go.  Then I laid her down, which she hated, and watched as she cried and then slowly fell asleep.  It took about 45 seconds for the gas to work and she calmed down.  It was scary and weird to see her eyes roll back and fall asleep.  Then I had to leave her and go wait with Justin.
The procedure only took about 15 minutes.  The dr used an electric probe to determine where the muscles are around her anus.  The problem with Mckenzie's bottom is that her anus is more anterior than normal and not totally surrounded by muscle.  This could cause incontinence for her down the road.  The EUA told us that she does not have sufficient muscle around her anus.  And the area with the most muscle complexes is about an inch posterior to where her anus is located now.  Unfortunately this means that she needs corrective surgery.  Dr. Klima suggests that we do the surgery soon before we start potty training.  This way Mckenzie will (hopefully) be all healed and ready to be potty trained when the time is right.  The other thing to consider is that I'm having a baby in May.  So this means we need to do the surgery in the next month or two.

After discussing things with the doctor we headed to the pediatric PACU.  Mckenzie was just starting to wake up from the anesthesia.  She was really out of it for the first 10 minutes.  She kept flinging her head around, trying to rip off all her cords, and was totally inconsolable.  After that she was still really unhappy but would have some moments of sitting on my lap peacefully.  Eventually she was content to watch a show on the ipad.  She finally ate some pudding and was able to drink apple juice.  Then her hunger really kicked in and she kept asking for "more" of everything.  

They call this bubble thing the "distractor".  They roll it into the room in attempts to distract the kids from being sad/ripping out all their cords.  Mckenzie didn't really care about it until after they took off her heart monitors, O2 sat monitor, and IV.  Then Mckenzie was much happier and wanted to check it out.  Right after this picture was taken she turned to look at us and said "bye" and starting walking out of her room.  She was not happy when Justin had to chase her down and bring her back in the room.  

Mckenzie will have the corrective surgery sometime in the next few months and she'll be in the hospital for around 5 days.  (That's gonna suck.)  Then she'll be recovering at home.  It's definitely not fun to hear that your little baby girl needs surgery.  I don't think any parent wants to think about their kid having surgery and then dealing with the subsequent pain and recovery process.  But we'll get through it and like I said earlier hopefully we'll be able to look back at this and see how blessed we were.