Surgery and Chemo...

We started very early this morning - actually not as early as we would have had to if we were coming from home, but early enough.

At 7am we were in admitting and by 8am Rebekah was being prepped for her surgery. We sat in the pre-op area quite a while waiting for Doctor Bliss, the same doctor who installed her central line initially. At about 9:30am daddy got to go into recovery and be with Rebekah (and bekka bear) as they woke up from surgery. As always, Rebekah had a rough time waking up. It normally takes her 2-3 hours to get all of the anesthesia out of her system and while that is happening she can be wide awake one moment and then the next her eyes roll up into head and she sort of goes to sleep and then wakes up again with a start screaming and crying. By noon she was doing pretty well.

Last time her central line was a tube (actually one tube inside another called a double-lumen) coming straight out of her chest with one row of stitches at the point where it exited the skin. This time she came out with the tube being sewed at the exit, a small loop about the side of a 50 cent piece and another row of stitches about 180 degrees through the loop. The idea being that if she pulls this one the loop will give first, then the first row of stitches, and only then will it actually pull to where it comes out. We also learned that the longer the tubes are in the more the skin grows around them and actually makes them harder to come out. The doctor told us it generally takes about 6 weeks for the skin to start growing onto the tube - exactly how long it took her to pull out the first one.

Rebekah gets visitors from lots of different nurses - even ones that have been assigned to her in the past but are not now. Once a nurse has her she sticks in their hearts and they always love to come back and see her, play with her (and Sarah), etc. This little girl sure is special in a lot of people's hearts!

Grandma C came down to surgery waiting and played with Sarah a while while we waited for Rebekah to come out. Then she came back at lunch time and helped feed Rebekah lunch while mom and dad went down to the cafeteria for a break - that is SO helpful. It is great having a grandma who works in the hospital!!!!

Grandma M came over after work and spent much of the evening with Rebekah. Rebekah sure loves it when any/all of her grandmas come to see her. She just delights in it.

This evening Mike, Tara, Emma and Benny also came over. They stopped by the house and brought us some needed stuff that was left behind. Basically they made a special trip down here to bring the stuff to us. This is on top of doing laundry, cleaning the trailer, taking out trash and other things that they do to help. THANK YOU SO MUCH GUYS!

By the time Rebekah's blood counts, urine counts and everything else came together so that she could start her 48 hours of chemo it was between 5 and 6pm. That means that at the earliest, if everything went exactly right, we might be able to get out of her Wednesday evening. We always knew that was a chance but pretty much figured on Thursday. We'll see.

Please pray for a good couple of days and that the chem targets exactly what it needs to. We have no way of knowing for sure if it is helping. At least we don't until the next set of scans in the middle of July. Until then we can only pray for the continued miracles we are seeing in her life. Thank you all for being a part of that.