And Here's the Recap

So sorry for the delay... Needless to say, it's been a very long, very emotional day. It's like reliving the last surgery all over again only more painful (if that's possible). A lot of that has to do with the extra time we've had to solidify a bond with Gwendolyn now and the fact we only had days as opposed to months to get prepared for the actuality of surgery.

As you can see from this photo and the one below, Gwendolyn is pretty knocked out. That's probably a good thing so she isn't aware of the pain. Apparently the surgery did nothing to temper her feistiness. As you can see, they had to put socks over her hands to prevent her from messing with her breathing tube... just like they did during her last stay here when she tried to rip out her IV.

She'll just be resting for the majority of today. Tomorrow morning, they will tighten the screws for the first time. I'll try to get a better photo of them... they are kind of tough to see the photo above but if you look just past her eyes, you can see the very tip poking up from the dressing around the incision.

We really don't know a whole lot right now. She's been assigned to the same doctor and nurse practitioner as she had her previous stay in the NICU. That is nice because they are familiar with her.

They hope to begin the process of weaning her off the breathing tube in 2-3 days. Until we get her off the breathing tube for at least 24 hours and have an idea about her ability to feed again, we won't know for sure how long it will be before she can come home. If she does well, the process might actually begin this weekend but that's really putting the cart before the horse right now.

The screws will be tightened about four times a day and will increase the jaw a total of about a millimeter a day. The tightening process will take 10-15 days. The total length the jaw will be increased is debatable based on how she responds but will likely be about 10 millimeters total. The screws will then stay in 8-10 weeks to ensure the jaw has fully healed. Ergo, sometime just after the New Year she'll get them out.

Well, since I really haven't slept much these past few days, I'm going to sign off now so I can try to get some rest. I'll post an update tomorrow.

Thanks to you all for your help getting through this difficult time!