Faith's Surgery Story

Well Faith had surgery on Friday morning at Children's Hospital in Seattle to remove the tumor in her right arm. The doctors did a biopsy and confirmed that the tumor is in fact benign. They were able to get all of the tumor out of her arm & we will go back to Seattle in two weeks to have her arm looked at and then again in 6-8 weeks for an X-ray to make sure the tumor has not come back. Faith did really good during surgery and the doctors and nurses were wonderful with her.

After surgery was the most scary time of our life. Faith did well after she woke up post surgery. She was a bit groggy and irritable (who wouldn't be), but doing good. She was smiling at us and chatting & was able to eat. They sent us home from the hospital and we were ready to head back home...hopefully having Faith sleeping during the ride home. So, we went back to the Ronald McDonald house where we were staying and started getting ready to pack up our stuff. Adam and my Mom were going to clean the room up and pack & I was going to take care of Faith. Well, I took the room keys out of Faith's hands which she was playing with. Faith was very upset about this and started crying. I tried to calm her down, but she stopped breathing & closed her eyes. I looked at her and said "Faith breathe" and nothing. I blew a breath of air in her face to see if she would react & nothing. Faith's lips and whole face turned blue. I yelled for my mom & Adam to call 911 (I guess I must have yelled "CALL 911" about 100 times to everyone according to Adam) and I took Faith and layed her on the floor of our room. Faith arched back and was completely stiff. She also did a little bit of seizing during this time. I gave her rescue breaths (part of CPR) and nothing was happening & she still was not breathing. I decided to pick her up and run with her out into the lobby of the house so we could get her to the hospital ASAP (Children's Hospital is less than 1 mile from the Ronald McDonald House). While I was running with her I was still giving her breaths of air. After about 45 seconds of her being unconscious she started taking breaths of air on her own. She still had her eyes closed, but started to breathing. Slowly she came to and continued to become more and more alert. The fire department showed up and by that time Faith was doing ok. They decided it would be better for us to transport her to the hospital and keep her calm. Adam, my mom and I took her back to Children's and while we were getting into the parking lot, Faith started acting strange, so I had Adam stop the car and I ran with Faith down to the emergency entrance. Once there the nurse didn't understand what we were telling him had happened. He asked us to put Faith on the scale to weigh her (she is afraid of nurses now & cries when they are around). That sent her into another crying fit in which she stopped breathing for a few seconds and turned gray. Adam yelled that this is exactly why we were taking her in to the ER & had me take her off the scale. The ER nurses who were in charge of triage left a lot to be desired that night. The other ER nurse attemped to tell me that this was a common behavior for children, but wasn't understanding that Faith just had just been discharged from surgery less than 30 minutes prior. She put Faith up to a monitor that shows her oxygen levels and they were very low. So, they finally put us into a room & had the doctors come in to evaluate Faith. At this point, Faith was finally calmed down & was sleeping in the hospital bed. The doctors decided it would be best to keep her overnight and monitor her to make sure she was ok.

Faith did great during that night and was released yesterday morning.We drove home from Seattle yesterday & had a good trip. The pass was clear & we got to enjoy seeing the winter wonderland around us. Adam and I have never been so happy to head home. We feel so blessed that Faith is doing good & that the tumor is out & that it was benign. We saw a lot of children over the past 3 days that were not as fortunate.

Sorry this is so long, but I also wanted to write this down so that some day Faith will know what she went through just after her 1st birthday.

Thank you for all your prayers and support for us.

Love,

Jamie