2 Steps Forward ~ 1 Step Back

Sunday afternoon, we perfomed Sophie's 8th expansion, giving her a total of 720cc's in each expander.  She did great with the expansion, with the help of our friends Kai Lan and big suckers.  Now the we are nearing the end of the expansion process (Wow!  It seems so strange saying that.), Sophie's expanders are not getting as soft between expansions, so I was not sure if I would be able to get 120cc's this time.  I knew it would be great if we could, but I also knew that I had to be very careful to not overfill and cut off the blood supply to the cappilaries in the skin.  The expanders were really tight, but we had no problems.  Or so I thought. 

After the fill, I got dinner ready, and we all sat down to eat.  Sophie ate a few bites and then got this look on her face like something was wrong and told me she was done eating.  She did not get a really good nap and had been eating a sucker, so we thought she was tired and not hungry.  She got down a played a little, but then came to me and asked to get in my lap.  She did this off and on for a while, which is not like her at all.  I gave her some Advil to see if that would help, and then she started getting whiny.  We still thought that maybe she was just tired, so I gave her a bath and got her ready for bed, thinking that she would go on to sleep.  It got worse. 

She started getting really fussy and couldn't be still.  We went to bed and let her get in the bed with us, hoping that she would doze off and everything would be okay the next morning.  She woke up every 30 minutes or so crying.  I gave her a does of Tylenol with codeine thinking that would help.  It didn't, and the crying got worse.  This rocked on until midnight, when we decided that we needed to take some of the saline out of Sophie's expanders.  I applied the emla cream and set the alarm on my phone to wake us in an hour, not that we were asleep.  Finally, 1:15am rolled around and we were able to remove 60cc's of saline from each expander.  That did the trick, and she was out like a light. 

I knew that we could remove some saline if need be, but never expected to have to do it.  Boy was I glad that we did!  (And I'm positive she was too!)

Sophie with 660cc's of saline in her expanders

Sophie's surgery is scheduled for May 13th.  Only 3 more fills to go!