Surgery, Shot, and Trip to the ER

SURGERY
The surgery is over!!! She was under for 6 hours with several complications. They had no luck intubating her through her nose and had issues doing it through her throat, which is common with Brooke. To make a long story short...they pulled 2 wisdom teeth, pulled 2 other teeth that had infections, fixed several, and cleaned all of them. Thanks the to Neutropenia, her gums are weak, several of her teeth are loose and because Brooke is Brooke...she has very short roots to boot. What this means is that there is no fixing what they remove. She has another wisdom tooth that they didn't mess with because it isn't causing her any problems. Recovery was the smoothest we've ever seen with Brooke - PRAISE GOD! She didn't spend much time at all in recovery, which was nice. Overall...Wednesday was a long and frightening day!!!

THE SHOT
We did blood work at 12:00 and got the shot around 2:00. For such an expensive shot, it sure was a little dose. UNM feels our insurance will pay it since it is written as a 1-time deal. YAY!!! We have to have follow-up blood work done in a week (here in Clovis) so the Neutrophil levels can be checked. The good thing about the shot is that it helps protect Brooke during her post-op recovery period. The bad thing is that it is only temporary and it comes with nasty side effects, which we started seeing today.

FEVER AND THE ER
Brooke did fairly well following the surgery and the shot until Thursday night. She waited until we got home from Albq. before having problems. Go figure! Her fever was 101 around 8:00 PM but we managed to bring it down. Then at 4:00 AM, she spiked to 103 and by 4:45 AM she was still hot so we took her to the ER. I must say, we were in and out quicker than ever before and without any of the usual hassles that we've experienced in the past. All of her blood work was fine, no infection, and her Neutrophil levels had actually already came up some. (The shot is working!) They ran a bag of saline in her and determined that she was dehydrated more than anything else. So we're really pushing anything she will drink at this point. Her eating is very hit and miss right now.

Brooke looks much better today. She's more active and the fever has been lower and easy to bring down. We pretty much keep her on a rotation of tylenol/ibuprofen around the clock to help with the pain. Swelling has been minimal. We saw some side effects of the shot kicking in today; she seems to be achey and did complain a few times of her back hurting. So I keep her on a heating pad on her back and hip and an ice bag on her cheek. She's very much pro-momma right now but I have managed to get some of the house cleaned on/off throughout the day.

Thank you for the prayers, the kind words of encouragement and for your friendship. In closing I'd like to say that even though this sweet child comes with physical imperfections, she has the most perfect spiritual foundation that I've ever seen. Isn't God great!! We are truly blessed to have Brooke in our lives.