Cochlear Implant surgery - check!

Well the time has finally come and gone. Kendall had her cochlear implant surgery on February 12th . (She's kept us so busy since, I'm just getting around to blogging about it!)
Thankfully we had no issues with insurance and the surgery was approved very quickly. Although for a while we were not sure if it was going to happen, even right up to the day before. Kendall had been fighting a virus that left her so congested and snotty for over 4 weeks. We fully expected her surgeon to say no to the surgery once he heard her nasty cough. We were shocked when he said that he was comfortable with continuing with the surgery. He said she's been fever free, her lungs and ears were clear,  and that the virus was most likely on the very tail end. We were just dealing with drainage that could take weeks or more to dry up. It was now or risk her really catching something down he road.

 On a side note, I don't think that I mentioned this before but originally we were were offered the option of getting Kendall implanted at 6 months old. The catch was that due to her age and size she would only be implanted on one side. She would then have to come back in a couple of months to do the other side. I wasn't comfortable with having her go under anesthesia twice so we opted to wait and have it done bilaterally at 8 months.

We were up bight and early. We had to be at the hospital by 5am to prep for her surgery that was scheduled for 7 am.

 I was worried she would have fit not being able to eat prior to surgery, but thankfully she wasn't cranky. All the medical equipment and my iPhone kept her distracted.

The surgery took a little over four hours. We were updated on Kendall's status frequently by the OR nurse with this pager. The time actually seemed to fly by and before we knew it our surgeon was out showing us pictures and telling us it was a success.

Seeing her for the first time in the recovery room after surgery. It was a total flashback seeing Kendall all bandaged up like her brother. They even had the same hospital gowns. I can't tell you how may times we said to each other  "Can you believe we are doing this again?"

Once we got back to her hospital room Kendall was able to take a good three hour nap. We had the hospital staff bring us an adult hospital bed and we took turns holding her in our arms. Just like her brother, she wanted nothing to do with sleeping in a crib after surgery. They both preferred to be in an upright or inclined position. The small dose of morphine also helped get us through a rough spot after she woke up from her nap.
  Speaking of morphine, Kendall had a morphine dose ordered for every hour if she need it after surgery. She had one dose while she was in recovery and didn't need another until about five hours after that. We were grateful that Kendall didn't require pain medication that often because our nurse was pain in the butt about giving it to her. She kept telling us that a just a dose of Tylenol should take care of the pain as Kendall screamed in my arms. She also said that we should only give her Tylenol because she won't have morphine tomorrow when she went home. Really? I thought, she's in acute pain, she just had surgery on both sides of her head, and it's been five hours since she had anything! The doctor prescribed it for after surgery for a reason, otherwise I would have just taken her home and given her Tylenol myself. Grrrr.  It was all I could do to not go all momma bear on her and pull the I'm a freaking pediatric ICU nurse card on her. Thankfully my husband was there to calmly but sternly state "my wife would like her to have morphine and I need you to get it." She got the hint. ;)

Can you believe this was our hospital room? or shall I say rooms? I guess the census was low because they gave us a VIP room. It had a another room attached that had a pull out bed, refrigerator, microwave, and TV for the guest staying with the patient. Kemper and his cousin had a blast turning it into their own pad while visiting.

We had a pretty smooth night. Kendall was up about every 3-4 hours to feed and get an occasional scheduled pain med, but otherwise she was totally fine. I snuggled up with her in bed until around five am.  I could no longer stand the crick in my neck from not being able to move in fear of waking her. Daddy took over and I got to try out the "guest" room. The next morning Kendall woke up happy as a clam. It's amazing how resilient kids can be. She just wanted to play and play.

To minimize swelling Kendall had small drains placed behind her ears during surgery to drain the extra fluid. They were easily removed the next morning by her surgeon. She still had some drainage afterwards that required us to change out her dressings every once in a while. You would think I being the nurse I would change them out but nope Daddy insisted on doing it.

 
  Kendall had her surgery on a Wednesday morning and we were home by Friday afternoon. It just all went by so fast and we couldn't have asked for it to have gone any better. (well maybe the morphine part.)   K even enjoyed his time away from us. He had a blast getting spoiled by my parents.

Valentines Day was two days after surgery and none of her cute Valentines outfits would fit over her head, so we improvised!!

We took Kendall's ear muffs, Princess Leia buns, water polo headgear, ear protectors off Sunday night. They had told us to take them off Monday morning but she had such a hard time sleeping with them we decided to take them off a night early. (we did this with K too) Sure enough she slept through the night once we did.

Her swelling was much less than her brothers, most of it was on the top portion of her head where the implants were and around the temples. Kinda made her head look like an upside down triangle.

Her ears are really swollen here, but I thought her incisions looked great. Kemper's incisions looked very similar and nowadays you have to really look hard in order to see them.

           
My sweet bionic babies!!

K back in 2010 at 9 months                                     Kendall 2014 at 8 months


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