Surgery Day Schedule

Well, it's the eve before Hazel's first cornea replacement surgery and this is the first opportunity I've had to lay out our schedule for tomorrow.  Sorry for the late notice...but better late than never I guess.  Anyways, the schedule for tomorrow is as follows:

• 4:00 AM - Family wake up call, need to get in the car in the next 30-45 minutes
• 5:30 AM - Arrive at Cooks Children's Hospital in Fort Worth
• 8:00'ish - Surgery will begin after the pre-op work is complete, including her visit from the anesthesiologist.  The surgery could start earlier or later than the scheduled time.  The surgery itself takes between 60 and 90 minutes.

After the surgery Hazel will be in observation for a couple of hours...from what we can gather it will most likely be 4 or 5 additional hours in the hospital once the surgery is [successfully] complete. 

The biggest follow-up question that I've had about the surgery is people wanting to know when the doctors would know if the transplant was a success.  The short answer here is that we don't know.  In my mind, Dr. Bowman will be able to tell us if the surgery went according to plan and provide more details on the condition of Hazel's first eye after he was able to see behind the cornea.  After that point it will most likely take some time to observe and monitor her progress in the coming weeks.

 

Aside from the chaos in the first three days of her life, Hazel has been able to enjoy life as a normal infant.  She sleeps, she eats, she uses diapers left and right and loves to be close to her parents.  We even got to go do some trick or treating with her cousins for our first Halloween.  We've loved every minute that we have spent with her in the first three weeks...nothing about her situation has put anger in our hearts.  If anything, we love Hazel more than we ever thought possible and feel blessed that so many people have Hazel on their mind.

I will update the blog when I have time and when we have information to share...so everyone might need to exercise a little bit of patience.  We feel optimistic about her first surgery and appreciate all the prayers and encouragement.