Saturday, June 13, 2009

Don't Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch!

Well, I guess I may have jumped the gun on my last post. I thought things were looking up and we were on the downside of the hill. Wrong! Thursday night, shortly after my post, Rhae became a little more restless and was starting to have some more pain. It progressed through yesterday morning, and finally, around lunch yesterday, I called Dr. Chu to see if we could come in and let him look at the arm again because she seemed miserable again and the splint had slipped a little. He said he would be in a meeting, but to come in around 2:00. So, we went in then and started with an xray. After the way things have been going for us, do I have to tell you what we found? Yep, it looked worse. So we took the splint off and Dr. Chu made a new one and we put in on and redid the xray hoping it would look a little better, but no such luck. :( He said he was concerned that with her being a baby, she is not going to be still and it is just going to keep causing her more problems, and thought we probably needed to go ahead and have the K-wire put in. He tried to call our ortho in Nebraska, Dr. Esposito, but his office said he was out until Tuesday. When I got home, I called his office to see if they had any way of getting up with him, but they said he was out of town, so I emailed him the latest xray and explained what was going on, hoping I would hear from him before Tuesday. Well, he called me this morning and said he got the email and he is not as concerned about how the bone looks as he is at how much pain Rhae is in. He said he really didn't want to have to go in and fix the arm because she is just so small and the arms usually do well on their own, but he will do it. I told him I really don't want to have to resort to surgery, but she just doesn't seem to be getting much better and honestly seems to be in more pain now than she was last week. I told him this has been hard to handle, but I could endure it if I just could see a light at the end of the tunnel and asked him when enough is enough and when we should throw in the towel. He said technically, by now, it should be showing some sign of healing and she really should be feeling better. He said that sometimes when kids are on narcotics for extended amounts of time (like Rhae has been the last 13 days) they become miserable while taking them and suggested we try giving her plain Tylenol instead of Lortab for a few doses and see if it makes a difference. He told me to call him on Monday if she didn't seem to be feeling better and we would probably proceed with surgery,

So here we are now, just waiting to see what will happen over the next 36 hours. I really am worried that we will have to go to Omaha for surgery, which means trying to figure out getting a flight out and then getting there, because nobody flies non-stop from here to there. So, please keep us in your prayers and I will do my best to keep everybody updated.

1 comment:

Melissa Swartley said...

Oh geez! I'm sorry to hear that Rhae isn't feeling too good right now! I'm hoping things improve with the Tylenol and that she will come around! :) Keeping her in our prayers and hoping you won't have to go to Nebraska, but if you do that you get a good flight in and back! Sending big hugs!