The Goodwins

Our Little Ella woke up screaming.  It seemed like she had a nightmare.  We snuggled for 30 mins or so and she’s now fast asleep.

She’s now back fast asleep.  Hopefully it will last a while.  Of course I just had to take a picture or two of her.

I made the executive decision that a nightmare wake up didn’t count as actually waking up so I didn’t call Bonnie.  So please keep me in your prayer when she finds out.

We still are waiting to decide if we are leaving or not tonight, but leaning toward staying in Chicago.

Well, Ella is finally asleep.  She’s actually down in the bed without one of us hold her.  This give Bonnie a chance to head back to the Ronald McDonald House for a well deserved nap.  I’m sitting next to our sleeping beauty, who still is making those “after crying” sobs.  Hopefully she’ll stay down and Bonnie can get some sleep as the only way I could get her to leave is to promise to call her as soon as Ella wakes up.

Ella still hasn’t calmed down much.  She got about an hour or two of sleep between I and Bonnie holding her.  She woke up in a tizzy and cried on and off for pretty much two hours.  The nurse brought over some Codine, and unfortunately only had enough for Ella, so Bonnie and I will have to muddle through. Ella started to calm down a bit but still breaks out in tears periodically.

It looks like Ella’s next expansion round won’t start until next year, probably Feb. or March, but we’ll know more in a couple of weeks when Ella’ sutures will be removed.

Looks like there’s a good chance we’re staying here over night, but we probably won’t know that for sure for a couple more hours

We are with Ella in the post op area.  She’s extremely ticked off right now.  It’s hard, as she’s hardly ever mad.  But she’s definately mad now.

We will see how she does through the afternoon to see if we will take her home today or stay overnight in the hospital and head home tomorrow.

However, right now we are taking turns holding her.  As I type she’s finally starting to fall asleep in Bonnie’s arms.

Thanks again for your continued prayers.  We’ll keep you updated.

We also have pictures up of her after Post Op at ellagoodwin.com.

The surgeon tells us she did very well.  He was able to get a good chunk of the nevus, but is assuming that the next round of expansion will require two expanders due to the orientation of her mole (it’s right up against her ear) and the desire to keep the hair orientation as normal as possible.

We are heading to see her now.

We haven’t forgotten to update you…  We’re just still waiting…

When talking to the doctor this morning before Ella’s surgery, he seemed to think he’s not likely to put the front expander in this surgery.  Most likely we’d wait for that until early next year to allow everything to stabalize and not run up against the holidays.  This is good and bad news.  It would be nice to allow Ella to get back into a routine and be able to play with her friends, but it’d also be nice just to get this part of her life (and ours) over with and to move on to the next part!

Ella went into surgery around 7:30 CDT.  We expect to hear something around 9:00 CDT.

Ella’s 350 ml expander has 484 ml of saline since last Saturday.  That means she has over 17 ounces or nearly 1.1 lbs in her head which is over 5% of her body weight.

Ella’s in great spirits.  We’ve been talking about saying “bye bye” to her bubble which seems to please her.  Of course, it’s hard to explain that a second bubble will be coming, as well as two to three more surgeries.  The surgeon tells us that he’ll decide tomorrow during surgery if the front expander can be put in or not.  If it’s not put in, it may be as long as October until the front implant is put in to her forehead area.  We also found out in June that Ella will need corrective surgery as her eyes are crossing.

We came over late this afternoon and checked into the Ronald McDonald House.  I was able to get a quick bite to eat as Bonnie and Ella had McDonald’s on the way over and I had a late lunch after working until about 2 PM before coming home to eat.  Ella wasn’t really hungry, but had to eat a bit with daddy anyway.

She had a grand time getting a new bear and toy (a race car that SHE picked out), finding a really LARGE bear, and an even bigger dog, exploring the play room, playing video games, and bathing in the oversized tub.  She watched some Veggietales, read  a book with Mom and Dad and went down surprisingly easy.

Of course, she very well could be upstairs crying for Mom as I’m downstairs finding the wireless connection here.  Amazing how you can be tethered by wireless. But nothing seems to be holding Ella down right now.

Ella’s surgery is scheduled for 7:30 AM CST.  We are planning on heading over the Children’s Memorial from the Ronald McDonald House around 6:15 AM.  As Ella JUST went down and is not to have food after midnight or water after 4 AM, it might be a hard morning if the surgery is delayed.  That was a hard thing for her before the last surgery, which wasn’t until almost noon, as she was showing us every food sign she could think of and we were ignoring them.

That’s about all.  We put pictures up from today at ellagoodwin.com and will try to keep everyone updated here.

Thank you for all your continued prayers and God Bless!

I know we’ve fallen behind in our updates on Ella’s health and expander progress, but I have to say it’s been nice to sit back and enjoy life without really having anything to report.

Since the surgery to remove her forehead expander Ella has been healthy and happy! She’s even enjoying bath time again… they had become a screaming fest whenever we had to put water on her head! And as you can see from the pictures her “bubble” is really growing!

And Ella is growing up everyday too - she’s added the word “papa” to her vocabulary, as well as the sound of a bee. She’s getting really good at blowing bubbles (in the tub), and has even stood up in the middle of the room a few times - of course she avoids doing it on command so we haven’t gotten any video of it yet! But she’s still the same cutie who loves to peekaboo and make us all laugh!

Thank you to everyone for all the love and support that we always feel surrounding us.

Yesterday was a long day.

We left the sunny shores of Saint Joseph, MI around 7 AM EDT (6 AM CDT) and headed to the windy city of Chicago.

At first, Ella was excited about going for a ride in the car, mainly because of the DVD player in front of her car seat where VeggieTales plays.

However, as soon as we reached the doctor’s office around 8:30 CDT, she wasn’t as thrilled. We were able to calm her with by reading to her while waiting. She’s very into making sure at least either her dolly or bear is included (preferably both) in the reading.

The nurses and resident ran Ella through the pre-op workup (although she was much more interested in playing). They were nice enough to do most of the workup in the waiting room as we were the only ones there and Ella remembers the back rooms in less than favorable light.

We then headed over to the hospital around 10:00 CDT to check in for her emergency surgery to remove the expander that was behind the failed sutures and some of the nevus in the area of the failed sutures. Bonnie slept little to none the night prior but made it through the day without nodding (except for prayer) once. Ella recognized the pre-op area and began crying.

Her room had a bed and a TV which helped a bit, and we were able to calm her down with distraction and book reading.

However, the real thing that helped distract and calm Ella was her dolly. She played with Dolly for some time. She liked to pretend that she was “Mommy Ella” was taking care of Dolly’s dirty diaper. She was very interested in acting like Dolly needed help, not Ella. I’m sure it’s a transference of the needs of Ella to Dolly but it was very fun to watch her as she was very cute around, and protective of, Dolly.

After cleaning Dolly’s diaper, Ella read to Dolly, insisting that Daddy had to hold Dolly up so Ella could read the book to Dolly.

She also played with some of the toys at the pre-op area, which was nice that they provided.

However, after a while she grew tired and we turned to old reliable. She zoned to VeggieTales until time to give her the “calming” medicine. That did calm her down a bit, but not enough to put her asleep before the nurses took her away. At about noon CDT Ella left in tears after kissing mom and dad, and I believe Ella was crying as well.

After about ninety minutes, the doctor found us in the waiting room and informed Bonnie and I that the surgery went well. She successfully removed the expander and the area of the nevus where the failed sutures were, as well as suturing up the hole in temple that started the infection and this whole mess. She also took samples of the fluid in the infection and we should learn if anything “odd” is in there by Monday.

We were able to see her around 2:00 PM CDT and love on her. She surprisingly took juice fairly quickly and we were able to get her into better spirits fairly quickly. The resident attempted to redress her bandages, and after he left, I redid it with the help of a nurse.

However Ella wasn’t smiling again until she was blowing all of the nurses kisses goodbye. She was very pleased when we finally got her, Dolly and Bear into the car and we were on the road around 4:30 PM CDT.

She coughed up a little of her apple juice on the way home in Chicago, but it was stop and go traffic and that probably didn’t help. She didn’t have any additional issue and fell asleep even before we got on the Skyway from Chicago to Indiana.

We got home around 7 PM EDT and Ella was very happy to be home, eat some pizza we ordered and finally calmed down enough to go to bed around 9:30 PM.

She woke up this morning around 7 AM in pretty good spirits. It’s noonish now and I just put Ella down after a nice long walk outdoors where, after exchanging waves and blown kisses to our neighbor, one of Michigan’s newest Federal judges, she fell asleep in my arms and is now down taking a nap, giving me a spare moment to finish this post. She was pretty active this morning and she and I played a lot.

There are some new picture of her up at Ellagoodwin.com and one of us will try to give a more detailed update for what’s happened since later, either today or tomorrow.

Thanks for all of your continued prayers.