Friday, June 6, 2008

Update on Milly's surgery

Today was Camille's post-op appointment with the surgeon, so I thought I'd share some info about her surgery.

We had surgery last Friday to remove a dermoid cyst that was on her forehead. We noticed the bump when she was about 3-4 months old, and asked about it at her 4 month check-up. After that, we did an MRI and met with 2 specialists to determine what we were doing. The 2nd specialist, a plastic surgeon, recommended that we wait until she was at least 1 year old before proceeding with surgery. So we waited for what felt like forever, but once it came up on us, felt like it was very rushed. I know that's contradictory, but I'm sure any parent whose been in a similar situation knows exactly what I mean.

The surgery went well, but took a little bit longer than expected. Turned out the cyst was much bigger than they thought it was, it had embedded itself pretty deep into her skull and what was visible was only the tip of it. The surgeon said that it was roughly the size of a marble, whereas we originally thought it was about the size of a small pea. I know we did the right thing by going ahead with the surgery, if it had gotten any bigger it would have worked it's way through her skull.

All of the nurses, the anesthesiologist, the surgeon - they were all wonderful. kept us in the loop on everything, they all appropriately loved on Camille, just plain friendly and nice. It made the whole ordeal much easier.

They were also very pro-breastfeeding and were happy to hear that we were still nursing past one year. Each time I had talked to someone regarding the surgery, I was told that she wasn't going to be allowed to eat or drink anything after midnight the night before. Her surgery was scheduled for 10am! When I finally talked to the anesthesiologist, I asked again if she would be allowed to nurse any time after midnight. She asked "breast-milk, or formula?" When I replied breast-milk, she said that I could nurse her up to 4 hours before surgery because breast-milk was soo much easier for babies to digest. This was a huge relief to me, as Milly has a huge nursing session everyday about 5am, so the timing was perfect.

They also encouraged me to breastfeed Camille as soon as she wanted after the surgery because she would be hungry and "she's going to want that comfort from her mama." It was very nice to hear someone (or in this case, multiple someones) in the medical field so supportive of breastfeeding, even past one year.

Before surgery:

And immediately after:

24 hours later, you can see how swollen and bruised her eye is:

And today, 1 week later:

1 comment:

Rhonda Gales said...

Glad everything went well. She's adorable.