More Random Surgery

Here's another post of random pictures from the surgery days and some may be repeats...

Kadence is tying her first ever blanket to donate to the hospital.

 Shelby is eating her breakfast in the hall, in Kadence's wheelchair on the day of the rod surgery.  We didn't want Shelby to eat in front of Kadence although Kadence does SO good fasting now.

 Kadence wanted a family picture in front of Mike and Sully because she took one with all her visitors.  This is the morning of her rod surgery.

 On May 7th Kadence was extremely glum all day.  We kept trying to figure out what was wrong but we didn't find out until night that she was homesick.  We are so happy that she waited until the day before being released to get homesick.  She just laid in bed all day with her giraffes.  I love that she put her neck brace on her giraffe.

 Kadence wanted to just sit on the couch with all her stuffed animals when she got home and we made sure to make that happen.

 Here's a little note Kadence wrote to her class.

 Amanda had a necklace made for Kadence and it says "stronger than I ever thought possible" on it.

 Shelby helping Kadence with a blanket.  Shelby wasn't good at it, in fact she was so incredibly frustrated that she couldn't do it.  I showed her how, Kadence showed her how....it just wasn't clicking for her.  She kept apologizing for not being able to do it and I refused to tie 5 sections because I needed her to do it.  She did eventually get them tied after much frustration and struggle.  She was so proud of herself and I'm glad I made her prove to herself that she can do hard things.

 The girls and I tying our little hearts out

 On May 6th they sat Kadence up in bed for about 5 minutes.  She did pretty well and never complains.  She always does what she's asked to do and I'm so proud of her.

 The bandages were bigger than the incisions by a long shot and still they were smaller than I expected.

 Kadence took this picture to post to her Facebook page to show that she could get out of bed. (May 7th) It was difficult for her and took a lot out of her to get to the bathroom and back, but she always had that little smile and "can do" attitude.

 We knew on May 7th that we would be going home in the morning.  We quickly realized that despite sending a lot of our stuff with Rachel, we had more stuff than could fit into my car.  I originally wanted to get discharged and go to Ronald McDonald for a night before coming home, but with Kadence being homesick we let her choose and she chose to just go home.  David worked hard to get our room at Ronald McDonald cleaned and packed.  Around 9 at night he decided to load the car up and take almost all our stuff home and then come back. The girls loved laying and watching movies together.  It was like a mini sleepover.  In fact they both went to sleep.  Shelby was so good about sleeping through Cindy, the nurse, coming to check vitals.  David came and got her at about 1:30am to bring her to the Ronald McDonald so they could pay and check out in the morning. 

 This is on May 7th when we told Kadence the dr would let her go home in the morning.

 May 8th, waiting to be discharged.  She was so excited! (We ALL were so excited!)

 Kadence's friends, Chloe and Naomi, brought over balloons and visited for a while when she got home.  Then Shelby made her a crown to wear so we knew to treat her like a princess. 

 All her many new stuffed animals.  I think I counted 20 before finding a few more.

 The incisions all healed and steri strips were removed.  I started to remove the steri strips and figured we'd just do 4 per day for 4 days.  Kadence cries when you remove a bandaid oddly enough so I figured this would be the most traumatic part of the whole experience.  She did great the first day and on the second day told me to just take them all off and get it over with.  She was a great sport and everything had healed so well.

 Here are her incisions a few days later.

 I don't think I've posted a picture of her xrays yet.  It was an incredible difference and we are so grateful for the doctors, nurses and staff at Shriners.  We're thrilled with the h3s2 surgery and that Kadence had a dr who felt confident in doing it on her.  It's the first one applied in the US applied in this particular way.  On April 10th Kadence's curve was at 78 degrees.  On April 28th it was 61 degrees and we were amazed.  On May 8th we found out that her curve was 45 degrees.  It was so hard for me not to cry.  I was SO emotional anyways because we were saying goodbye to all the people who had taken great care of my baby for a month.  Then to find out that her surgery improved her curve by so much was shocking.  It wasn't meant to improve it more than a few degrees and it improved it 16.  David and I are so happy with the decision we made.