Post-Op Update

Waiting is Hard (about 3 hours into surgery)

While everything that happened yesterday was extremely complicated and over my head, I'm going to do my best to try to explain the details of it. Ask me questions if this is clear as mud...

Surgery

The surgery itself consisted of the nerve graft and bone shaping on the inside corner of Josie's eye. 

Small incision below her eye for bone shaping

The nerve was harvested by using a scope and going in through a small incision made behind her right ankle bone. The harvested nerve ran the length of her lower leg and extended to the outside of her foot (this nerve is a sensory nerve, so Josie will loose some feeling on the outside of her foot but will not loose any motor function). Once harvested, the nerve was connected or "plugged in" to her facial nerve on the right side of her face or her "good side". To do this Dr. O made an incision that ran parallel to Josie's right ear.  After connecting the grafted nerve, Dr. O tunneled it across Josie's "good side" and over her upper lip using the incision by her ear as well as two small incisions made inside her mouth and a final one made next to her left ear.
So to put this more simply, imagine the grafted nerve as an extension cord that has been plugged into a working outlet (the outlet being her facial nerve on her good side) and then extended over to the area it is needed (the left side of her face). Over the span of the next 4-12 months the grafted nerve will gradually gain power and ultimately come back to life. When her nerve starts to come back to life she will experience a zinging sensation on her left cheek when the right cheek is touched. Once that zinging sensation starts the second step in the reanimation process will need to happen within 1-2 mos. 

Her leg is wrapped to help with swelling

The bone shaping was the simple part of yesterday's surgery. Because of the tumor, Josie has excess bone growth on her cheek bone. Her doctors shaved the bone down on the inner corner below her eye through a small incision. 

There were several other issues that her doctors had hoped to address during yesterday's surgery but because of the length of time spent under anesthesia and the many incisions that she had already they decided against further complicating her recovery. This may result in another small surgery yet this year, we'll know more after we follow-up with her doctors next week.

Recovery

While the crazy guy was trying to climb Trump tower with suction cups last night, Josie was waking up in recovery. After 7 hours of sedation she did have more tummy issues than normal (for her) that lasted into the the early hours of the morning. This led to her being slow to eat, drink, walk and feel better today but ultimately she did and was released from the hospital shortly after 6 this evening. Her swelling is minimal and she has bruising that is just starting to show but overall I've been surprised with the ease of her recovery so far. We head back to the hospital to have a drain removed in the morning and then we end our stay next week with a follow-up appointment with her doctors. We are going to have to start facing next steps sooner than our comfort level allows, but for now we're enjoying the calm and relief of having another big surgery behind us.

Blogging and Sleeping