This is a note Kyla's husband sent to our support group.
"Hi all. Chip here. I'm taking a quick break while Kyla's parents
are with her at the hospital.
Well things did not go quite as smoothly as we had hoped. There were
some further developments after Karis's last update.
On Thursday morning (the day after the surgery), the doctors told us
that that Kyla's hemoglobin count was lower than expected. The
difference could not be accounted for by normal blood loss during
surgery and the thinning of the blood by an IV drip. The difference
was such that they decided they could not wait to "see how things
went" and elected to take her back in to surgery to look for a source
of internal bleeding. Her blood pressure was rather low as well,
which could also indicate blood loss.
Kyla went back into surgery Thursday around noon and was in for
around 2 hours or so (I think, her mother and I were trying to
distract ourselves somewhat while waiting). We got a good update
during the surgery, and afterwards Dr. Veninga came out to tell us
that he had found a source that was 95% likely the source of the
blood loss. He had found an amount of blood in the area that was
almost exactly the amount he estimated she had lost from the blood
analysis. He fixed the source and closed her back up.
Following the second surgery, Kyla's blood pressure made a marked
improvement, but her heartrate was a little high for comfort, so they
moved her to a different room where they had more sophisticated
BP/Heartrate monitoring equipment so that those vital signs could be
monitored constantly.
At that point the doctors had said that Kyla's system was likely
still thinking that she was low on blood volume and was trying to run
her heart faster to compensate. Slowly but surely, her heartrate
declined through the night (almost agonizingly slowly for me, but
surely and steadily) and her BP remained at a healthy level.
The following day, Kyla was much more alert and said she felt much
much better than the previous day following the first surgery, during
which time she said she had a very difficult time waking up for any
period of time. She was able to walk 3 times yesterday, increasing
the distance each time. She said the pain was no fun, but was not as
bad as with some surgeries she has had in the past.
Today, all of Kyla's vital signs are pretty good. Her hemoglobin is
down a little again, but it is within a range that is consistent with
the thinning that is expected with the large amount of IV fluids they
gave her to get her heartrate down. Her BP and heartrate are good,
and her white cell count is down, which would indicate a low chance
of infections.
The only problem is a fair amount of nausea that she has encountered
today. This also is not unexpected, though she had hoped to escape
it since it had not cropped up on the first day following her second
surgery, which is about the time she has experienced nausea following
surgeries in the past.
Kyla slept much better last night, which in turn allowed me to sleep
better. I feel a little bad because I am a very hard sleeper and the
first couple of nights Kyla sometimes had to call to me several times
before I would wake.
The doctors have not cleared her to take anything more than ice chips
yet, and she is dearly wishing she could move on to liquid water, but
we expect that to come very soon.
Dr. Veninga was very surprised that she was able to walk at all on
Friday, let alone 3 times. He had not expected her to be ready to
even attempt walking until Saturday (today). Kyla has a strength
that I have not seen in many other people so I was not quite as
surprised, though I was proud and pleased.
That's all for now."