Dottie had her first surgery yesterday. 

When she was in the NICU we noticed what everyone thought was a granuloma forming in Dottie’s nose. Likely from an injury, a granuloma is an excessive amount of tissue that the body forms while trying to heal itself. The original plan was to remove it during her first lip surgery in March. However, after we got home, this granuloma continued to grow at a rapid pace, until eventually it was outside of her nose, where her nasal cannula was rubbing on it and it was causing issues with feeding. She was experiencing quite a bit of discomfort. So, yesterday, she had surgery to remove it. As it turns out, it was not a granuloma. Whatever it was has been sent to pathology and we should have more information sometime next week. The procedure went well and recovery time is very minimal. We are expecting to be discharged this afternoon. 

Although the procedure itself went well, this experience was not without its challenges - for Dottie or for Mama. 

Every now and then, people joke about things being “traumatic”. We all do it. An extra hard day at work, plans not working out the way we’d anticipated or “falling apart” … we say, “well, that was traumatic.” I don’t think I’ll ever use that word lightly again, because now I understand what real trauma feels like. 

Tuesday afternoon, I held my screaming baby while she was poked four times trying to get a lab draw before her surgery. She cried in a way I had never heard her cry before. I could do nothing but watch, as poke after poke failed and a new one needed to be done. That was traumatic. 

Then yesterday afternoon, I held her again, doing my best to keep her vertical, while she turned blue because her throat hurt too much to swallow after surgery and she couldn’t breathe past the saliva and secretions pooling in her mouth. That was traumatic. 

I can still hear her cries from both events, the gurgling sound as she struggled to get a breath yesterday, and I can still see the color of her skin change while we waited for the nurses to bring suction. That was traumatic. 

I don’t know how to release that feeling and move forward without these events constantly being in the back of my mind. Perhaps with time it just fades away. But right now, it’s still raw and painful, and all I want to do is hold my Dottie girl and never let her go. Because in those moments, her life felt incredibly fragile and I was terrified. Everything in me wanted nothing more than to be able to fix it, to be able to just take it upon myself and free her from the pain. 

In the grand scheme of things, we are only a short distance down the path on this journey with Dottie. I know that there will be lots of good times, but there will also continue to be difficult times and other moments like these that knock me off my feet and suck every ounce of energy out of me as I fight for my girl and do everything in my power to help her. So, I have to constantly remind myself of what I’ve known to be true this entire time, that the Lord sits enthroned. Even in the terrifying moments, when my body is shaking with adrenaline and I’m trying my hardest to not just completely fall apart. The Lord sits enthroned. He is making me stronger every day in all of the ways that my Dottie girl needs, and I will continue to trust that there will ultimately be good come from all of these hard things, because that’s the way my God works.