Monday, January 11, 2010

Out of surgery

They decided to forego the extra CT scan this morning and just get in there and take out the nasty mass. If things looked bad, they'd do another CT tomorrow and figure out what to do from there.

So she went in to surgery at about 10am or so. At about 11:30am, the surgeon emerged and told us a strange tale of discovery.

When they opened her up, there was all this old blood. That's odd, they thought. When they got further in, they realized that what they were looking at was NOT a tumor at all. It was her left ovary. It apparently had done what they call "torsion," which just means it twisted around on itself, strangulated, swelled up huge (at least as big as a ruby-red grapefruit), and had begun disintegrating. Obviously that ovary was gone, so they took the whole thing out. The other one was swollen, so they biopsied it and found it to still be okay, so they did a "pexy" on it (which just means they tacked it down with a stitch to prevent it from twisting on itself like the first one). They cleaned all the yuck out and closed her up (a big incision, from her navel all the way down).

They moved us to the surgery floor, which is a newer and wider-open section of the hospital. She's resting and waking up intermittently, having some chicken soup and apple juice, deep-breathing and turning. They want to get her up and have her walk a little bit this evening.

She received a couple of balloon arrangements and several stuffed animals from well-wishers at church and at school, as well as a few cards, which she read aloud. She loves hearing from everyone and when I tell her that I've gotten an e-mail from someone, she is always delighted to hear it. She's an easy keeper, this kid... if it were Martha, I'd agree with Charles, who left a comment that she'd be complaining about the food soon. Alice, though -- Alice just doesn't have a complaint in her little body. She inspires me.

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