Clara recovered very quickly from her surgery. The doctors told us she would probably be on the venilator for 48 hours minimum, and she was taken off at barley 24 hours! She was only given tylenol for pain management, and that was it, she was a little champion through it all. The tylenol took away all the pain she felt... I couldn't believe how strong our little girl was. David and I would tell her before and after surgery that she is so strong, and by how well she was doing, she was proving it. I loved when they took her venilator off, and she was able to nurse, quickly after they removed it. The IV's soon followed one at a time, the one in her head was first. We were very grateful to get that one out, epecially David, he hated that one most of all. She got a nice little sponge bath after to get all of the crud out of her hair from the tape that held on the IV. She cried the whole time, wore herself out, and fell asleep.
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| The most hated IV in her head, they had to poke her nine times before they even got this one in a vein! |
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| After they took the IV out, she didn't even cry! |
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| We didn't get any picture during the bath, it was an all hands on deck kinda bath, but we sure did get this cute one right after! |
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| All pretty and clean after her bath!! |
We were finally done with the surgery, Clara was recovering and healing beautifully, and we were very eager to get home, and to finally be done with all of the chaos! To really go home, like the original plan after Clara was born. Clara was five days out of surgery, and Dr. Bruney, her surgeon, said that we were good to go home! They would get her discharge papers ready, the nurses would teach us how to care for her incision, give us our discharge instructions and we were good to go! They said we couldn't leave until the pathology came back, but once it did we would be on the road. Both of our mom's packed up the rooms they were in, the car was loaded, and now we just needed the pathology report.
David and I and our mom's were all in with Clara just excited we get to go home. Dr. Bruney came in, and had the nurse pull a chair in for her. She sat down with us, and said I've been checking every half hour on the pathology report, and it's in. It confirmed that it was a sacrococcygeal teratoma tumor, and that 78 percent was mature teratoma, 20 percent was immature teratoma, and 2 percent was malignant..... That knocked the wind out of me. 2 percent was malignant, what did that mean, the got the whole tumor out so she fine. This was all going through my head. I finally got my breath back and asked what that meant, and what we had to do. Dr. Bruney then told us we would have to do chemotherapy. I started bawling, this wasn't fair, she had already been through so much! She was only 14 days old! In infants who get these type of tumors, 95 percent of them are benign. Then she started saying Clara could go in for surgery the next day to get a central line, broviac, put in, where they would administer the chemo....
I couldn't think, all of this was happening so fast, and Clara had just one through so much already. Once Dr. Bruney left, I had to leave too. I had to catch my breath. I didn't know what to do, I know I didn't want Clara to get chemo, and I could hear about it anymore. I went down to the chaple they have in the Children's hospital, and pleaded with God to make this go away, to please let it be that the pathologist made a mistake and read it wrong! But it wasn't wrong, Clara had cancer, her tumor was now classified as a germ cell tumor.
