Brynn's Surgery - 2017

It's surgery day again!!

Yep, that's right!  

But today we are not at Children's hospital for Jonah or Rees ... this time we are here for Brynn.  

It's been six years since Brynn had her last surgery.  To recap, she was born with an encephalocele in the nasal portion of her skull. 

Of our four Chinese dumplings, Brynn's medical condition has been the mildest but still required some correction.  When she was three, she had a bone graft to fill the gap where the bone was missing (as you can see in the CT photos).  She also had a cartilage graft to fill the CUTE facial pocket created by the defect. 

As she has grown, the graft has not grown with her at the same rate and the main issue is that her nostril has almost completely collapsed.  We were originally going to wait a few more years before making this final correction, however, with the looming retirement of our favorite surgeon, we decided to get it done now.  He has already told us that this is one of the most difficult procedures to do and with that in mind, we would rather have the person who we're familiar with and knows us and just so happens to have like forty years of medical experience give it his best shot.

So, here we are on the way to the hospital ... all smiles!!

Here's a photo of Brynn from this morning ... so that we have a good "BEFORE" indicator.

Unlike the boys, Brynn was a non-stop chatterbox ... asking lots of questions and trying to help solve the medical and surgical challenges of the world as we waited in the Surgery Holding Area.  

I am sure I don't know where she gets that from!!!

When it was time for the "goofy" juice, she took it with ease and she actually made the "mmm" sound and said it tasted good!!  She would!!

She enjoyed watching the TV while we waited as she cozied 

up to her Baba's hand.  

Dr. Denny came to see her before they took her back to the OR.  He used his trusty flashlight (the one Jonah and Rees are always trying to snatch from him) and he looked up Brynn's nose and he made some "Hmm's" and "I see's" and then he said ... again ... "It's not going to be easy" and "It's the most difficult thing to do".  

But we were like ... ehhh, you've done it before ... piece of cake!!

She went back giggling and chatting with the nurse and Anesthesiology Resident and then we waited.  Well, it didn't seem like too long and they were telling us that Dr. Denny would be in to talk to us shortly.  

Guess what??

He said he did not have to do a cartilage graft.  He did not re-open the incision line that they originally did (where it has now scarred rather nicely ... for a scar, that is) and she did not have to stay overnight!!!

So, what did the surgeon do??  Well, he said that he made a small incision on the outer part of her left nostril and then took "extra" tissue from the inside center of her nose and twisted it and folded it over to build up the far side of her nostril.  Then he stitched everything back into place and "VOILA!"

We did spend most of the day there and she ate lots of popsicles and had plenty of juice.  Now we are home and she is relaxing ... with her exhausted mama (it clearly doesn't take much now to take much out of me), eating cheese balls and watching a movie on Pureflix.  

She's slightly puffy and may bruise a little but all-in-all, she looks great and feels great and now it's just a matter of keeping her hands away from her face and stopping her from making facial expressions that may aggravate the healing process.  She's worse than one of the youngers ... trust me!!

Thanks for all your prayers!!  Thanks for all your encouragement!!