Running Red Lights

Thank you all so much for your thoughts and prayers for Ambria. It was a very long couple of days. Here are the details...

SHORT STORY:
Ambria had her tonsils out earlier yesterday and then last night I found Ambria in her bed at 10:00pm in a pool of blood that was running from her mouth. We rushed her to ER and then they admitted her. She did not stop bleeding, she spiked a fever, and she was having problems breathing and needed oxygen. At 4:00am Ambria had emergency surgery to stop the bleeding. It was a long few days but she is home now and starting to recover.

LONG STORY:
Yesterday morning Ambria went in for a routine tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy (hers were enlarged and she was having some breathing problems). She did great. She was of course in some pain and had trouble swallowing fluids, but that is normal. We were expecting this. We were able to go home later in the afternoon, Ambria took a short nap, we went for a walk, and she took a bath. I put her down to bed at 8:00pm.

At 10:00pm, I was exhausted from a long day. I went to check on Ambria before heading off to bed myself.

I found Ambria laying in a pool of blood, sleeping!!

I ran and got Jerry. We scooped her up and rushed to Hackley ER. I was in the midst of freaking out, (probably due to the fact that I was so tired and I wasn't expecting to see Ambria laying in a pool of blood). Jerry was trying to stay calm for me, but I knew he was concerned when he started running red lights!

Ambria continued to bleed from her mouth, which is not normal after this type of surgery. Her oxygen levels kept dropping, and she spiked a temperature. The emergency nurses started an IV, drew blood to check on her blood counts, and called the on-call doctor.

Ambria was such a little trooper and was just zoned the whole time! She tried her best to stay still even when they were poking her to find a vein for the IV (they had difficulty because the veins were dried up).

They admitted her at 12:30am and we got transferred to the pediatric floor. The two nurses were absolutely wonderful and they stayed by Ambria's bedside, suctioning up the blood every few minutes and tending to her. Ambria ended up throwing up a lot of old and new blood, and I think at that point the nurses knew she wasn't going to stop bleeding on her own.

By 3:00am, the nurses were on the phone with the doctor and they decided to rush her to emergency surgery. They had to hurry and get a whole team of nurses and doctors together so this could happen (thank you doctors and nurses!). Ambria went into surgery at 4:00am and the doc said it was supposed to take 10-15 minutes.

Well, an HOUR later, the doctor came back. This was the hardest sixty minutes of our life, wondering what could have possibly gone wrong in the operating room. We waited alone in the deserted waiting room, reviewing a list of people to call in case of the worst. We just held hands and tried to keep our prayers short and honest. Jerry kept watching the second hand run circles around the clock...

Thankfully, everything went fine. The doctor cauterized (lasered) some tissue together, put in some stitches where the tonsils were, performed a partial uvulectomy (cut off part of the hangy thing in her throat), and pumped her stomach or sucked out all the blood from her little tummy. They brought her back to the room about an hour later. She didn't lose too much more blood so she didn't need a blood transfusion, which they thought they might have had to do.

The bleeding stopped after surgery, but Ambria continued to struggle breathing and keeping her oxygen levels up so she continued to stay on oxygen for a few more hours. Early in the afternoon, Ambria started to wake up, takes sips of juice, and was able to get off the oxygen and keep up her levels by herself.

We were released from the hospital late this afternoon and Ambria has been only been awake for about 20 minutes since then.

So, why did this happen? The doctors really aren't sure. I guess it is rare and this only happens to about 1 in 500--I guess Ambria was the "unlucky" one.

Who would have thought that such a normal procedure could have resulted in this?! We are just thankful that Ambria is fine, and we are very grateful to the staff at Hackley, and for the prayers and support of friends and family. Ambria is the "lucky" one to have all that love!