Surgery and Recovery

The above photo shows Ava right before her surgery on Friday morning.  She was anxious, but still smiling.  As usual, she did an amazing job stating her main feeling: fear.

Holly, Big Bo, and I had a harder time putting on our happy faces.  My emotions were always right behind my eyes as we waited for for the surgery to be completed.  The typical procedure includes hourly updates, for which we were so grateful - even if the call just said, "she's doing great!"

After several hours, the surgeon came in to talk to us.  She informed us that everything went great.  Beatrice the Rude Tumor was out, but they had to remove her right ovary since it was indistinguishable from the tumor.  Additionally, they were unable to access the problematic lymph node, so we were told to expect 2-3 more rounds of chemo to make sure we are in the clear.

Waking up from anesthesia was very rough and that kind of set the stage for the next 36 hours.  Understandably, she was in a lot of pain and felt extremely nauseous.  She was so miserable during those following hours that I felt that instinct to just ask the Drs to just knock her out with pain meds, which of course is not the right thing to do.  (Just being honest.)

Ava slept very little on Friday night, and Saturday was even worse, as she was completely alert and in so much pain.  If she wasn't hurting, she felt so, so sick.  Additionally, there were a lot of unpleasant sensory issues which did not subside after her epidural and catheter were removed (as we had hoped).  It was a very hard day.  I think that's all I want to say about that.

Saturday night she turned a corner, and as she talked to her brother and sister via Facetime, she got very silly and happy (see photo below).  It was the first sign that she was coming back to herself.  Morphine may have been involved.

Sunday morning started out poorly, but after the necessary meds, she was able to get up and walk around our floor!  The surgeons cleared her for discharge after assessing if she met all the criteria and we were back at Tri Delta by 1 pm.

Her sassiness has returned and she is clearly on the road to being fully herself again, in addition to being well.

All of this feels just a tad bit surreal and I don't yet feel like I have the right words to wrap around it.  Perhaps this experience is meant to be held closely by those in the story, or maybe someday in the future I'll have the words I need to adequately portray the events of the weekend, and all of this journey with cancer in its entirety.

Ava is a fighter - she is fierce and she is brave and we are past a major hurtle to beating this thing.

Please pray for her continued recovery.  We are so thankful for all of you.