Adventures with The Hagmans: Brooke's Big Surgery

Wow, I don't even know where to start with this post! Our little Brooke has been through such a rough couple weeks, I cannot believe how strong and amazing she is. I'll start at the beginning...when she was 5 weeks old my mom noticed that one eye looked different than the other, at first we thought it was bigger and then realized it protruded out more than the other. We took her to the pediatrician, who suggested an opthamologist, who ordered an MRI, telling us there was something behind it pushing it out and we needed to find out what. We were terrified, and the next day the MRI revealed a fluid-filled sac that looked like the membrane of her brain protruding out into her eye socket. Her skull had grown around the sac, so she was missing bone structure to separate the eye socket from the brain. We met with a pediatric neurosurgeon a few days later, Dr. Cherny, who has been amazing to us throughout this whole thing. He spent hours explaining her situation to us and described the surgery that would be involved to fix it. He wanted to wait a few months to let her get bigger, but also be monitored by the opthamologist to make sure it wasn't affecting her vision. He believed that her brain and vision had developed normally, which was such a relief to hear. So, in June they scheduled her surgery for Sept 21st, and the waiting began. It was nice to not have to deal with it and pretend things were normal for a while, but this black cloud of dread always loomed over us, even though we prayed and hoped it may somehow go away on its own.

Surgery day grew near and we tried to somehow prepare ourselves, but there were a LOT of tears and we looked at our beautiful happy little girl and felt so scared for her. The amount of prayers, love, and support from our families and SO many amazing friends kept us strong and we knew in our hearts she would be just fine. The day of surgery was the longest we've ever had, we arrived at the hospital at 6 am, and she finally made it to recovery about 7 pm. The doctors kept us updated, and they discovered that the sac in her eye socket was completely enclosed and detached from her brain membrane, which was great news. They were able to remove all the fluid, and the plastic surgeon reconstructed the eye socket to separate it, with some bone he removed from the side of her skull. Her ear-to-ear incision was closed up with stitches that would dissolve on their own, and we were amazed right after surgery that she didn't look all that bad, but was completely sedated. She stayed that way for the next 36 hours or so, and then really started to swell up in her face. They kept her on morphine a few days and eventually she was awake a little more and wanting to eat, but it was a few days before she was able to keep any milk down. Her surgery was on a Monday and by Friday the swelling was so much better and she was starting to smile again, it was such a great thing to see! We brought her home Sunday, and over the next week she made a little progress every day even though she wanted a lot of snuggling and didn't sleep well at night...but who can blame her!

It's now been two weeks and two days, and after a couple days of antibiotics after discovering she developed an ear infection, she really is starting to be happier and sleep better. We know each day she will be smiling more and returning to her old self and doing all the things 5-month olds like to do...like work on sitting up, rolling over, and eating some cereal! We have had SO much help from our families, helping take care of Ben the last couple weeks, who has been such a trooper. Kari arranged with a big list of our friends to deliver us dinner every night, and for the past 2 weeks and 2 more to come we have dinner delivered to our doorstep...it's awesome!

Well I will wrap up with some pictures of her journey over the last two weeks...her progress is amazing.