Sadie's Story ~ Part 2

All children are gifts from God. No matter what thier situations are. Some children are born perfect with no health issues thier entire life. Some are born with defects that are easily fixed with a few bumps along the way. Other children are born with health issues that cause a shortened life span or pain and suffering for most of thier lives. Either way it's in God's hands. He has a plan for all of us. We have no control whatsoever. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be able to control what happens to the ones I love, but unfortunately I can't. God gave me a refresher course on this lesson...

After walking away from Sadie and crying my eyes out, I calmed down and told myself that everything would be fine. Before Dr. Ostlie left I told him that I trusted him. Her life was in his hands. He himself responded, "She will be fine". Okay..so everything will be fine. That's what everyone kept telling me. Fine. Fine. Fine.

In the Surgery Waiting Room a scrub nurse (nurse in the operating room) will call the volunteers at a desk. They will call out the patient's name and transfer the call from the nurse to a little conference room. The family goes into that conference room and gets an update from the nurse. After the update you go back to your chairs to sit and wait for another update. Simple. Nerve racking. I didn't realize how badly I would want Sadie's name to be called out.

At 12:15 we got our first update. Surgery had started. The blood work had taken a while to do and the surgery ahead of us ran over. Dr. Ostlie started at 12. Sadie's vitals looked great. They would call us back in an hour with another update. We felt pretty good. Ate some lunch and visited with Mom & Dad. Called family to update them.

1:15. Family of Sadie Jones. Please take your call in Room 1. Sadie is doing great. Vitals look wonderful. Dr. Ostlie is doing well. We will call back in an hour with another update. No worries. Things are fine. Fine. I cried. Stress I'm sure.

2:15. Sadie is doing great. All of her stats look good. Dr. Ostlie had to pull out throascopiclly and make a bigger incision. Remember, the original plan was to go in thorascopiclly on her right chest-under arm area with a couple of 1/4" incisions and a microscope. The surgeon would hopefully be able to remove the part of the lung with the tissue in it, and remove the enlarged extra vein connecting it to the heart. 2 hour surgery. If he felt that he was unable to pull the "removed" part of the lung through one of the small incisions then he would pull out and make a bigger incision to finish the surgery. This was hour 2. Surely we will get a call in the next half hour saying that he his closing. A little knot formed in my stomach. It was a possibility, we knew that. We called a few people at home and gave them an update.

3:15. Sadie's vitals all look great. Dr. Ostlie is still working. It is shift change, so the next time you get a call it will be from a different nurse. Still working?? What does that mean? Did she have to have a blood transfusion? No. Is everything else ok? Yes. What's taking so long? I'm not sure. We will call you in an hour with an update.

4:15. Sadie has been under anesthia now for 6 hours. This is hour 4 of her surgery. We get an update call in the conference room. Sadie is doing great. Vitals look great. Dr. Ostlie wanted to let you know that the reason the surgery is taking longer than expected is because Sadie's anatomy is not what he expected. I asked the nurse what the meant. She said that she really couldn't go into detail because she didn't want to give us the wrong information. But Sadie was doing great. This is when I began to loose faith. The worry overtook my body. I got off the phone and just cried. I knew something was wrong. I also knew that that poor nurse on the other end of the phone couldn't tell me anything. I knew that Dr. Ostlie couldn't take a break from operating to explain to me what he had found. The next hour was horrible. I paced all over the waiting room with tears running down my cheeks. Watched other families leave to go to thier children in recovery. All the families that were there at 12:15 were gone. Others had filtered in for tonsil removal or other minor surgery. I really wanted to be one of them. In and out. I prayed. I prayed a lot. Our Father. Hail Mary. Just talking and pleading with God. Craig would just stare out the window or try to get me to sit. I was a wreck. We all were. We made a few calls to home to spread the word and ask for more prayers. All the prayers that we could get.

5:15. Dr. Ostlie is still working. It will probably be another hour. He's doing his best. Sadie is handling everything very well. I'm glad that she was. I had to hold on to that. But they aren't going to tell you on the phone whether or not your child is struggling during surgery or having any complications. I didn't know at this point whether or not Sadie was going to come out of that operating room alive. There were moments (that we found out later) that Dr. Ostlie thought the same thing. I sat in that waiting room chair that thought to myself, what if I don't get to take her home? How do I explain this to my other kids? I know something is wrong, but nobody can tell me anything. Can I just say stop, I don't want to do this anymore?? Just put Sadie back the way she was so I can hold her and give her kisses. I wish I would have done more of that before I handed her off for surgery. This by far was the worst day of our lives. The stress alone was unbearable. If my parents wouldn't have been there I'm not sure Craig and I could have made it. They made us focus on the positive and keep our hope alive. Then they called Sadie's name again.

6:30. Sadie Jones. I ran. Literally ran to the phone. All of us did. The scrub nurse said that Sadie was doing well. Dr. Ostlie was closing. I began to cry. The scrub nurses voice cracked. I could tell that she was tearing up to. She said that Sadie was ok and that Dr. Ostlie would be out to talk to us in a few minutes. It was over. The surgery was over. I hung up the phone and hugged everyone and cried. I fell to my knees and couldn't catch my breath. I knew that it wasn't over by a long shot, but she was ok. I kept telling myself that. She is ok. We get to see her. She is ok.

6:45. We were taken into a large conference room to meet with Dr. Ostlie. When we walked in the door he looked exhausted. The first thing that he said was, "She is one tough little girl". He sat down and explained the surgery to us and showed us some pictures. When he went in thorascopiclly he saw that Sadie had 8 veins, each one the size of two ink pens put together, that were connected from her lung to the lower right ventricle of her heart. He called in a cardiac surgeon to assist in her surgery at this point. He had to pull out and make a 5" incision to finish the surgery. 6 of the 8 veins had to be removed. While they were removing them he was surprised that she didn't go into cardiac arrest because of the amount of blood supply that they were taking away from the heart. A normal lung is divided into 3 lobes (upper, middle, lower) by fissures. These fissures could not be seen on the outside of Sadie's lung. Dr. Ostlie and the cardiac surgeon removed Sadie's lung from her body and put it on a table. For 4 hours they slowly dissected her lung until they could make out where her lobes were supposed to be. They removed her lower and part of her middle lobes. They they had to reconnect 2 veins from her lung back to her heart. The total surgery took 6 hours. Sadie had been under for 8. Dr. told us that Sadie would be in ICU for a while on a ventilator. Her lung was pretty beat up and couldn't work on it's own. Things would be pretty critical for a while. Her hospital stay would now be 5-7 days, maybe even longer. Craig asked if there were any other complications that he was worried about. He said that there was a lot that he was concerened about, but that was for him to worry about and not us. He was pretty confident that she wouldn't need another surgery, but time would tell. We made a few frantic and teary phone calls and headed up to PICU (pediatric intensive care unit) on the 2nd floor. It would be a few more hours before we would be able to see her. Once we did it broke my heart..... To Be Continued.