Emry's Surgery

Emry had been complaining for quite some time that her wrist was bothering her.  I didn't make an appointment for her to see the doctor because I thought it would go away.  But it didn't, and she then started asking me daily if I had made an appointment for her.  I finally did one November day in hopes that the doctor would say nothing is wrong.  Well, when I heard the words it's definitely broken my heart sunk.  It was decided to cast it in hopes it wouldn't get worse and the very next week we were in to see a specialist in Calgary.

In Calgary they took the cast off since it really wasn't doing anything.  The bone had already regrown trying to heal.  But it did it in the wrong way.  Surgery would need to be done to fix it properly.  Since it was basketball season and Emry loves basketball they put the surgery off until the end of January.  Emry also had to see a hematologist because it turns out she is also Factor V Leiden, just like me, only she is heterozyegous, meaning she only carries one gene. I am homozyegous, I carry both genes.  So the risk of clotting during surgery is lower than mine but still a risk.

We were able to see the Hematologist and get a date set for surgery, January 25 would be the day.  It came very quickly and made Emry very nervous.  But she was a trooper and was very brave.  She even decided she could go off without Jared or I into the operating room where they put her to sleep.  I would have liked to have gone but knew she needed to do it alone.  Jared and I waited for a long three hours for the surgery to be done.  But once she was in recovery and waking up we were able to talk to the surgeon, Dr. Braurer. She said that the injury was actually about two years old and started to hurt her more now because it was healing wrong and was bugging her to bend it.  The gap to fill after cleaning all the scar tissue out and bone was about 1cm wide.  Bigger than she was expecting.  Emry woke up quite nauseous and did throw up a little when we got her up to get dressed.  We gave her some gravol and hoped that would help.  It did and after letting it work and having her rest a little more we were finally able to go home.  We were at the children's hospital at 10am and left at 6:30pm.  It was a long day but she is now on the mend.

 

We have been keeping with a strict regime of tylenol every 4 hours and so far the pain is manageable.  The pain in her hip was the worst the next day after surgery, they took a bone graft from her left hip to put in her wrist.  They said she'd be up and walking no problem, but it was bugging her to walk for the first few days.  She used a crutch during the worst of it but is now walking no problem.  This week at school has been exam week so I've been picking Emry up after her exams and bringing her home to rest.  Her left arm gets pretty sore after being down too much.

Everyday she gets stronger, she will have to wear a cast for 8-12 weeks.  There are three pins holding the bone graft in and they want to make sure it stays in place.  Those pins will come out after 10 weeks.  I am so proud of her and how brave and strong she has been.  It was definitely scary for me to watch her go through surgery, but I knew she was in good hands and would be well taken care of.