Matters of Abby Heart:: A Little Scare

17 days after surgery we had a little post surgery scare. We noticed when Abby got upset and was crying that a bulge was protruding out of her chest in-between the bottom of her zipper line scar and her chest tube scar. Vince & I both thought it was concerning and took a video and sent it to his sister. She immediately called us and said we needed to call Children's Mercy-she thought it looked like a post surgery hernia but wasn't sure and said we needed to call asap. So we called and waited for the on-call doctor to call us back. So we waited. And then waited some more. After almost 2 hours we called back and waited some more. And then called back again and waited. Finally at 11pm we gave up and went to bed to "try to sleep". To say we were upset that after 3 calls we had not received a call back was an understatement. But we decided to see how the night went and if she got up at all we would just take her down to CMH. Luckily she slept all night but the second she woke up I called again and expressed how upset I was that this was my fourth call in 12 hours. Less than 5 minutes later we got a call back from a cardio nurse practitioner who first apologized for the "call back issues" last night and then asked me to send her a video and pictures of what was going on. Minutes later she called back and said "not to freak you out but I need you to come downtown NOW and pack a bag for all of you". Vince had just gotten to his office and turned right around and came home. I called his mom and she was at the house 5 minutes later. I threw together a bag for us and we were out the door. We were at CMH less than 30 minutes later and rushed into radiology for x-rays and then sent straight to Cardio. We saw the NP and after looking at the x-rays and looking at Abby she said that her worst fear that one of her twist tie wires holding her sternum had broken was not the case. That has a huge relief because if that had been the case she would have been back in the OR to get it fixed. She was still concerned though and wanted Abby's surgeon to look at her. He was currently in surgery but we were told he'd be out any minute. Well we waited & waited & waited & then waited some more. We were minutes away from getting admitted back into CMH when he got out of surgery and came and looked at Abby. He said unfortunately Abby was one of the unlucky 300 kids who develops a post-heart-surgery hernia. He says he maybe sees it once a year at the hospital. And Abby was his unlucky kid of the year. He then handed us his card and said that if in 6 weeks it hasn't healed itself he will personally go in and fix it himself. Then he told us we could go home! Since I am way behind with the blog I am happy to say that her hernia has totally healed on it own and will not require and further treatment! Yay!