Oh I see you are ready for the rest of our journey...ok well the pictures and captions part of this begins here....I hope you come away with something that will help you in your journey....if nothing else just an understanding of what some people go through...this is my experience......your's will be different because for one, it is your's.....

Day one after surgery.

I know this picture is dark, but it shows all the wires and tubes she's hooked up too. There were so many and I can not remember at this point what each of them was for. One was a heart monitor, one was something to do with oxygen, and of course her IV and I am not sure if there were any others or not. This also shows the way her head was wrapped after the first surgery, boy that sure made her look mean.

Love shows through the Tears

Mom and I had gone to get Arielle some clothes to wear, since she didn't have anything. This was emergency surgery we were not prepared. When we came back from the store, I found out that Arielle was receiving a blood transfusion....that's the tube that
looks like a phone cord going off of pillow, it's kind of hard to see but it is there. Needless to say I was not thrilled with this bit of news. Even though this was 1993, I was worried about the blood.

In the picture of my mom and Arielle, you can see the cord that was used for the transfusion much easier. You can also see in these pictures how worried we were. At this point I didn't know much about Hydrocephalus, so I did not know if my daughter would be doing all those normal childhood things like crawling, walking, etc...I just had no idea what she would or could be able to do. No one knew for sure how she would pull through either. Each case is very different and specific to the indiviual

Daddy's Girl

Wow she is already in her own room. And since this was such a trying time for all of us, we opted for a private room. We had to pay the extra for it because our insurance would not. But we did not care. We really didn't want to share a room with anyone else. After all we had been through we just wanted the privacy that this room would give us. I didn't realize how small it would be. One of the nurses told us that usually cancer patients stay in the private rooms. Arielle has less wires hooked up to her here, but she still has that headband. If I remember right it came off the next day and then the day after that we were sent home. I thought that was way too soon. Looks like I may have been right. This is a rare moment of her in Daddy's arms, not that he wouldn't have liked to have held her more. But she really was a Mommy's girl and preferred Mom.....She still prefers Mom, but has learned to tolerate Daddy just a tad :-)




To continue our picture journey......

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