Amazing Grace's Surgery

Amazing Grace had her surgery on Friday. Her clavicle was broken in 2 places. Clean breaks so that her right arm was basically just hanging there. They were quite impressive breaks; my children seem to have picked up on my motto of Go Big or Go Home.

The plan was to put pins in her shoulder. A plate has more risks & systemic problems, especially for thin girls like Amazing Grace, so we were really praying a plate wouldn't be needed. Well, "best laid plans" & all that...

Her surgery was to take 45 minutes, longer if the pin was a no-go & they had to go with a plate after all. As we got to the 1 hour mark, I gave hubby a look & he said, "We don't know that's what it is. Maybe something delayed them."

At the 1 hour, 15 minutes mark, I was going out of my mind. At 1 hour, 30 minutes, I was willing to claw someone's eyes out just to get info on my baby girl. I distracted myself by watching goofy videos on YouTube. At 2 hours, she was wheeled out of the OR & into Recovery.

The surgeon came out & I think he was a little surprised by the amount of people that jumped out of their seats to greet him. We had my parents, my brother, hubby, me, one of Amazing Grace's BFF's, my ex-husband, his wife. I think we looked like we were going to make him our next dinner with the way we all jumped up & pounced at him.

It took a very long time to get Amazing Grace's arm positioned just right, so that was the first cause of the surgery taking so long. Then they got the pins in place & they fell onto the floor, so they had to stand around twiddling their thumbs for 20 minutes while everything was re-sterilized. They had to break & chisel the bone (grossed out yet?) because it had already fused together in the overlapping position.

So after all that, they got the pins all set &...well...the surgeon could tell I've been giving Amazing Grace a lot of extra calcium since the accident. Her bone was so thick that the pins actually broke when he tried screwing them into place. It's a good thing to have strong bones in a teenage girl, but it didn't help in this case.

Amazing Grace ended up with a plate in her clavicle.

This is her current x-ray.* I think it's pretty cool what a plate looks like. I was expecting a, you know, metal plate-shaped item inside of her, not a chain.

I waited until last night to tell Amazing Grace that the pins weren't a possibility. I knew she'd be upset & I wanted her home & not doped up when I told her. Since the surgeon told us at the hospital, I made sure everyone knew that no one was to say a word about it to her. I didn't want her upset in the hospital. I wanted to take her home & get her comfortable first, & I wanted to be the one to tell her. I know her & I knew that if I wasn't the one to tell her, she'd be angry at me; she wouldn't want to hear it from someone else. The only people that knew before Amazing Grace did was the people that heard it from the surgeon in that waiting room. I didn't tell anyone else when they asked how the surgery went. Not because I was worried they'd tell her, but because it wouldn't be fair to her if she was the last to know something about her own body.

She's doing amazingly well. She looks good, she's up & moving around--not much but some. Her pain isn't as bad as I thought it'd be. And through it all she's had her sense of humor & smile, like when  she laughed hard when the anesthesiologist told her, "I hope you drive a car better than you do a 4-wheeler."

Right before surgery, the anesthesiologist came in to give her some Happy Juice & Amazing Grace had trouble not drooling on herself. Not from the drugs...the guy was hot. She'd been laying in the bed with her blanket that she's had since the day she was born & as soon as she saw the hot doc, she threw it at me & told me to hide it. She didn't want him to think she was immature.

It only took about half a second for the Happy Juice to kick in & Amazing Grace started laughing hysterically over everything & nothing. She then told the nurse how hot the guy is & the nurse said, "And not only do I get to work with him every day, but I get to see him every Tuesday night at t-ball."

Amazing Grace started waving her hand in my face like she was trying to flick a booger off her finger. It was annoying me. She looked at me kinda crossed eyed & said, "Where is it?" I looked at her hand & asked her, "Where is what?" If someone is flopping their hand around in front of you, you tend to think that's what they're talking about.

Nope, that's not what it was. She said, "T-ball. I wanna go to this t-ball place."

She's adorable when she's medically high in a hospital bed.

And here's a pic of my baby girl & me from our 4th of July party a week before her surgery. If you look closely you can see the bone on her right collar bone, broken & protruding, next to her hair.

That's my baby doll right there, folks.

*That's not my living room! That ugly furniture is in the hospital waiting room. That is my pretty thumb nail though.