bondservant by blood: 2 Weeks Post Op:)

Since I've last posted, we celebrated the 4th of July on the 9th, (due to it raining on the actual 4th, lucky us) and have celebrated my brother Noah's wedding to my new sister Emily, on the 16th. :) Just yesterday, we took Tesh back to Iowa City to take her suture stitches out.
So needless to say, it's been non-stop partying ever since we got home. :)

Tesh loved the grass and the fireworks, until an overstimulation occured and we had to start heading back to our van to go home before it was all over. We saw the finale walking back.

I painted Tesh's toenails, for the first time for the wedding. I also tied a black and white bow on the top of her helmet. ( I think I've gotten way more comments about her helmet, more than ever, after I did that. LOL)All the kids were pretty good during the event. Diva Eve was having a little trouble, but that's usual. :) God love her. Isaiah was all about being there to see everything. Easy going Tesh enjoyed the day's events, but then crashed by the reception. :)

Give a 2 year old your bouquet.....

This was similar to my hair style for the wedding. :) She wanted to wear her hair that way.

He was enjoying himself SOOO much. :)

I was terrified to get her stitches out. I rebandaged her incision on Saturday and found that her skin had overgrown over the last inch of stitches in the back. I cried my eyes out, and lo and behold, one of my dearest friends Stephanie calls to check on us. She reassured me, (backing my husbands words) that she'll be fine. I also had my "craniomom" to ask questions to too. That helped as well. But still, as my mother in law drove us to Iowa City, I couldn't help but wonder, "how in the heck are they going to get these stitches out without hurting her, especially with that overgrowth?"

We got there, and immediately our nurse LOVED the helmet bow, saying she'd never seen anything like that before. :) Lonnie, the PA, came in to take the stitches out, and said that the overgrowth is normal and that it's fine. As I held Tesh close to me to hold her still, she already started throwing a fit because of the restriction. She hates her head being messed with, so as I watched Lonnie clip each stitch, I new she wasn't hurting her, and that the scream I was hearing was all, "Leave me alone!!" ( I know her blood-curdling pain scream, and that was not what I was hearing) So that made me feel a lot better. After that, the stitches were just sliding out, like everyone said they would. It was over. She was free of stitches.... well mostly. There are some stitches that will desolve after a few months, but now we can work on helping this incision heal even more, allowing it to scab.
Isaiah and Eve were so cute during the whole process. We had them in the room, and they were watching with such curiosity, but when Tesh really started getting mad, they started singing to her, which helped a little, but it warms the mother's heart. Isaiah and Eve bicker a lot, but come together as a team, when one needs them to, and I love it. I hope they never lose that.
We got to see another x-ray view that was taken after surgery. It showed us where the other cuts were made during surgery to encourage the brain to push the skull out on the sides as well.
Let me explain this one last thing, by the time we are helmet free, there will be no more gap at the top, BUT the suture will "gel" together. It will be a flexible material of skull that allows for growth still cause it's not hard actual bone. We still need to be careful with her head as if it were a newborns head, but there won't necessarily be "a gap" there. The fear is that it will continue to fuse together again too soon. That will require another surgery later. But our hope is that it will not fuse together again too soon, and she'll be free of the worry of cranio-.
I haven't had to give her tylenol in almost a week. She's doing excellent. She's eating foods again, ....slowly... but eating them better. She's not gaging and wincing like she was before. I'm going very slow and very small bits though. Her hair is starting to grow in a little. I think she might have 1-2 mm on there. :) Her incision looks so much better without the stitches.

Nurse Lynn taking the bandages off for the last time. :)

She recovered quickly from that. lol

PA. Lonnie taking the stitches out! :)

Kids watching and singing. Here's the x-ray photo. Now, you have to look carefully, you can click it and see it bigger, but there are 2 grey lines on top (where the mouse/arrow is) going down, ...those are the cuts. There is also a cut in the back where you see the gap. That was an extra cut because of the progress of the fusion where the sutures come together. The mass on top, outside of her skull, near the back, is all swelling :( No more swelling today though. :)