On Wednesday April 2, during a routine diaper change, Kathy noticed that Aurora's right labia looked swollen. Kathy poked at it and it didn't bother Aurora in the least, so Kathy thought "hmmm..." and closed up the diaper. By Thursday, it was much more swollen and felt harder to the touch. Kathy asked Jon to look at it when he got home from work and he decided that a call to the doctor was in order. On Friday morning, Jon called the nurse's hotline at the pediatrician's office before he went to work. When they called back an hour later, it was decided that Aurora should be brought in for a doctor to examine.

In the meantime, Kathy did some research on the Internet and diagnosed that an inguinal hernia was the most likely culprit. Aurora's symptoms seemed to fit perfectly (on the right side, got worse when she cried, etc.). Dr. Dominguez and Dr. Brown both looked at it and decided that it was indeed most likely a hernia and got us a consultation with a surgeon at Boston Children's Hospital that afternoon. Kathy picked Jon up from E-Ink at 3pm and we went to see Dr. Weldon, who definitively diagnosed the hernia. There were only two things in question at that point: exactly what caused the hernia was unknown (an ovary, the fallopian tube, or some intestine?) and when to schedule the surgery. Following his advice, Aurora was checked into Children's Hospital that evening for observation. Kathy and Jon snuck home for a few hours after 2am, when the IV was started and Aurora could no longer be fed until after her operation. It was the first night since Aurora was born that Kathy did not sleep in the same room as her.

Aurora had surgery the following morning. Despite the reassurances of all the nurses, the anesthesiologists, and Dr.Patel, Kathy was a wreck as Aurora was wheeled off into the operating room. Jon was unable to convince Kathy that Aurora was a trooper and strong enough to come through without any problems. Luckily, Jon was right and only an hour later, Aurora was in recovery. About 45 minutes after that, we were allowed to see Aurora and Kathy nursed Aurora before she was brought back up to her room. In retrospect, probably the hardest part about the surgery for Aurora was not eating for 12 hours! By the way, it was a wandering ovary that caused the hernia.

All these photos were taken at Children's Hospital (Room1026a) after her surgery.



On the monitor, the readings are for:
Heartrate (anything over 200 set off the alarms, so when she cried for more than a minute, the nurses would pop in to see what was happening)
O2 Saturation (100% is perfect, under 92% required extra oxygen)
Respiration


This what her incision site looked like when we brought her home from the hospital on Sunday April 6, 2008. She was held together with some sort of skin superglue, which fell off a week later. By her two week post-op check-up, the scar was barely noticable.