Several people have asked about the surgery on Monday and what it entails. I thought I'd fill everyone in all at once...
The truth is, after hearing about how "minor" this surgery is, I would think it was no big deal if I was sending a patient down to have it. However, being the patient this time (and also having two precious lives that could be affected as well) makes it a lot more scary. This experience will definitely change how I look at patients when they are going for a procedure that seems "minor" to me. No matter how small, procedures are scary, especially when you've never been through it before. (And all the risks of the surgery that they HAVE to tell you about are extremely overwhelming, even if you know the risk is very very small.)
Anyways! The doctor we met with at U of M did a wonderful job of explaining the surgery and answering ALL of our questions, and she even gave us her phone number in case we thought of more. She will not be the one performing the surgery on Monday, but it will be another member of her team, who we will get to meet either Sunday night or Monday morning. I will be checked in at 6am on Monday morning and have an IV put in so I can receive a preop antibiotic and fluids/sedation meds during the surgery. They'll also give me some meds to prevent contractions while they're messing with my uterus and all that good stuff. I will then have an ultrasound so they can get a good picture of both babies and where their umbilical cords enter the placenta. I will then be taken down to the 4th floor (I assume this is the main OR) of the children's hospital, where I will be met in the OR by 3 anesthesiologists, two surgeons (the maternal-fetal medicine doctor and a fetal surgeon), several nurses, and lots of people, like med students and residents, that just get to watch. The joys of a teaching hospital!
For some reason, the next part is the scariest part! The epidural or spinal (not sure which). After my last post, I got some good advice from lots of people, mostly just to try to relax and take deep breaths. I talked with a nurse yesterday who is on our case who said that there will be a nurse in the OR whose job it is just to distract me while this happens. That's encouraging! I'll be happy when that part's over. The anesthesiologist will also give me some meds through my IV to make me sleepy... the more, the better!
After the epidural is in and I'm good and numb (and hopefully sleeping), the procedure will start. They'll make about a 1cm (I'm guessing) incision through my abdominal wall, uterus, and amniotic sac of baby A (since it's bigger). They'll put in a tiny camera so they can look at all the blood vessels in the placenta. The first hour or so of the surgery will be spent just mapping out these vessels and coming up with a plan. Once they know what they're going to do, they'll use the same incision to insert a laser next to the camera. This laser will be used to cauterize the blood vessels that connect the two babies.
A little background... ALL twins that share a placenta share some blood vessels.The problem with TTTS is that they do not share equally. Normally, doctors would not have to intervene and cauterize the connecting blood vessels, but in our case, they need to stop the blood that flows unequally from Baby B to Baby A.
Once they are done cauterizing the connecting blood vessels (or at least all the ones they can see), they will drain some of the amniotic fluid from Baby A before they close me up. (Why not... they're already in there anyways, and it's not good for her to be swimming in so much fluid).
Obviously, my description of the surgery is if everything goes perfectly as planned. As you can probably imagine, there are plenty of risks to opening me up and poking a hole in the amniotic sac. We are praying that everything goes as planned and they're able to get rid of the culprit blood vessels so that our babies can grow and develop normally!
I'll have to stay in the hospital until the next day, at which point, if all goes as planned, I will have one more ultrasound and then be discharged. My care will most likely be transferred back to Grand Rapids at that point, but we are going to be very busy with appointments and ultrasounds for the next while.
Thank you again for praying, and keep it coming! I'm going to make Nate take his turn and update this thing when I get out of surgery on Monday.
Love,
Sara & the Girls (and their Daddy too)
No comments:
Post a Comment