Well, yesterday marks the four year anniversary for Anna's first surgery, the
Kasai. I can't believe it has been four years already, she has come such a long way. At the time I don't know if I really knew
what was going on. It all seems like a blur to me. I think I was still in shock during this time. I know that some of my readers know exactly what I'm talking about. It was at seven weeks old when Anna's regular pediatrician became concerned with Anna's still being jaundice. I had talked to a family member the day before that told me I should get her checked out, "she may need to be put under bili lights", she said. Oh how horrible. I thought it sounded horrible to have to bring her to the hospital for a few hours to be put under bili lights. The very next day we went to visit our pediatrician, who hadn't seen Anna since she was about three or four weeks old. He told me it wasn't right that she was still jaundice, and that he would like to send us to a specialist at Children's Memorial Hospital, he also mentioned something about blocked bile ducts. My first thought was, ok, so you they'll give her some medication that unblocks them. I didn't even know where bile ducts were. On his referral, from what I could make out, he had written down ?biliary atresia?. That was the first time I had seen that word. Looking back I can't believe how very little I knew about all of this. I didn't even know why babies got jaundiced, or that it had anything to do with the liver. You can imagine my shock when our
Dr. Whitington told us that he was sure it was Biliary Atresia, Anna was to be admitted that day to run further tests to be sure including a liver biopsy, and that if it was indeed Biliary Astresia she would need a procedure called the kasai and eventually at some point in her life she would need a liver transplant. It hit us like a ton of bricks. It took hours, days, for it to all register. Anna seemed fine besides her yellow color, is what I thought then. Looking back I know better, she was anything but fine. She was crabby all the time, barely slept, and had major feeding problems. I was in denial, I know that now. Only three days after we came to Children's Anna had her Kasai. She was just 2 days short of 8 weeks old. Those seven hours in the waiting room were miserable. Our 7 week old baby was having major surgery, I was scared about what the days following would be like, heck, what the years following would be like. It's unbelievable now. Anna is doing so well. It seemed like years while Anna was sick. It's hard to believe now that she had the kasai, 2 bouts of cholingitis, a month in the PICU, and her liver transplant all before she was 6 months old. Now, Alexandria is 7 months old, and it seems that she was just born yesterday. The time has flown by with Alex. By the time Anna was 7 months old she was home from the hospital and doing very well, it seemed like 7 years then, not 7 months. It's hard to explain the way I feel about all of this, and I am not great at getting my feeling out in writing. This was a bitter sweet day for us.
Now at seven months old Alexandria is getting growing up very fast. She has a tooth! She is crawling, and she does so big! You know, "How big is Alex?" Then when you say, "So big" she puts her arms up. She even tries to say it, but it sounds more like "AHHHH, AHHHH!" She is brilliant. Poor thing has been sick though. For a couple weeks now she has had a cold. One night last week she was up almost all night. In an attempt to calm her down I laid her next to me with her sleeping on her stomach and I was stroking the back of her head. As I was doing this I noticed a little lump on the back of her neck. This naturally freaked me out. I woke up Jason to make him feel it, but he didn't think it was anything. After I finally got her to go to sleep I put her down in her crib and tried to get some sleep myself, but you can imagine the thoughts going through my head. This could very well be nothing, but it could very well be
something. After Anna and all she went through I don't take anything lightly. So, I got up and did a little research on my trusty computer, (well not so trusty lately, but that could be a whole other post) I came to the conclusion that it was probably just a swollen lymph node which was very possible because she had been sick. That put my mind at ease enough to be able to sleep until I cold call my ped the next morning. I got her in and he thought it felt like what I thought it was. He checked her out and asked me if she had been pulling on her ears, but aside from being stuffy and sneezy she had been pretty happy besides that restless night before. She had an ear infection in both ears, poor thing. I wouldn't have brought her in if it wasn't for that lump I felt, but I am glad I did. He was surprised that she didn't act like she was in more pain. My strong little girl, she takes after her big sister Anna.
I wouldn't feel right unless I included a couple pictures in this post. In an attempt to get a picture of Alexandria's tooth, this is what I got. It isn't big enough yet to see in a picture, but I like this picture anyway
Here she is doing SO BIG!
And crawling
