Thursday, June 19th - Surgery is Done!!!

It is 11:30 am. Kathy and I are waiting in our PCU room, with our families, when there is a knock at the door.

It is Dr. S and Dr. M. The surgery is done and it went as well as can be expected. Luckily, Kinley's diaphragmatic hernia was small enough that Dr. S did not have to use a patch. This means that Dr. S was able to close the hole by suturing tissue to tissue. Dr. S had to make a separate incision, other than the main incision for the repair surgery, in order to push Kinley's spleen out the way. He informs us that Kinley has a good amount of left lung which we are overjoyed to hear, but size does not always correlate to function. We will have to wait and see how her left lung functions. A chest tube was put in to help drain any excess blood that may be pooling in her chest cavity. Since Kinley's body has always grown with some of her bowels in her chest, her abdomen was not quite large enough to contain everything once the bowels were moved down. To get around this situation Dr. S left the inner most layer of muscle open and closed the remainder of Kinley's incision above it. This means that Kinley will have a hernia in her abdomen wall and this will allow room for everything to fit. This abdominal hernia will need to be fixed later, but not for a few months or even a year. Dr. M informs us that Kinley's BP and oxygen saturation were great through the entire operation. She also lets us know that they plan to keep Kinley completely paralyzed for the next 24 hours. This is mainly to minimize her bleeding while she is still on ECMO and receiving heparin.

The nurses are getting Kinley presentable and we will soon be able to see our baby girl again.