Surgery went well, she's coming out of her shell...

We made it back to Iowa from Chicago yesterday evening after a much too long car ride. Between traffic/construction and weather it took us about 7 hours. I pray it doesn't take us that long every time because that will get old really fast.

Angel's surgery went as planned and over all she did well. Coming off the anesthesia she was very disoriented, confused and very fussy, this lasted most the day. They had me suit up and join her in the recovery room because she was fighting them and that was a little tough. She did the same with me too, trying to kick off the IV line in her foot. It was obvious she was in pain so the gave her a dose of morphine and when she still wasn't doing better after about 15 minutes or so they gave her another which finally seemed to calm her down and she slept for about an hour. Then it was time to move her to the pediatric/kid's korner to a room of our own. She continued to be quite fussy and dosed off an on for the next several hour. Jason and the kid's left around 4:30pm for the night so it was just she and I from then till morning. We managed pretty well, she wanted me to hold her at times but most the time she preferred to lay in her bed. Finally about midnight she finally said "mama" to get my attention and then chatted with me for a bit - so I knew the anesthesia had finally worked it's way out of her system and our little girl was back. Overall she slept pretty well through the night, she'd sleep for an hour or two and then wake up a little fussy, the nurse would give her meds and check on her, she'd watch TV for a bit and then go back to sleep.

Here's our baby before surgery...

Here she is after surgery...

We were finally released to leave the hospital at around 11am yesterday . We then headed to the pharmacy to have her antibiotic filled for the trip, grabbed some lunch and hit the road for a much longer journey than we had expected. Angel, Michiael (our 10 year old son) and I will head back to Chicago next Wednesday for an appointment on Thursday where the nurses will show me how to inject Angel's 3 ports with saline to begin inflating the expanders. After that we shouldn't have to go back to Chicago till Angel's tissue replacement surgery in September.

Thank you all for your continued prayers, we have what seems like a long journey ahead of us over the next 18 months or so.

Blessings!