Fill #3

Has it already been more than a week since she had surgery?! Incredible how fast time flies! Keziah is doing really well. Her incision at the top is still a bit crusty but looks much better than a week ago. She has a drain coming out of her head, above her ear, collecting blood and stuff. She is handling that very well, too. So is Lincoln. The last time she had a drain, he was 6 months old. I wasn't worried about him grabbing it and pulling then. This time around, he is 2. And curious. So to keep him from touching her drain, we lied to him. I know, bad parents, eh?! We told him it was hot. And it has worked!! The first day, every time he saw it, he would point to it and say, "Hot!!". He has never once tried to yank on it.

During surgery last week, Dr. Zuker was able to add in 40 more cc's. So here is what she looks like today:

So her bubble is not super-obvious yet. Give it a few more fills, and she'll really have a high bump on her head. 

The next time she has to go in is on Wednesday, January 8th. We have to be there for 7 in the morning. She will be put under to have the drain pulled out. While she is out, they will do another fill. Once she wakes up and is up and about, we can go home.

Many are asking what the plan is, now that the back expander is out. Will they be putting in another one soon? I actually have no idea. We have not asked Dr. Zuker that. We are thinking that they will be concentrating on the top expander, fill it up as best as it can go, and then see how much of the nevus can be removed using that stretched skin. Then once we see what is left, we will go from there....either do an expander again, or maybe so little is left that he can remove it through excision.

While we were relieved to have it removed at the time, due to the infection and the expander coming through the incision, the "setback" hit us a few days later, realizing that the process just may now be longer, depending on what Dr. Zuker plans to do to remove all of it. Unfortunately the expander had to be removed even before the skin was stretched too much. If say the expander was coming through the skin after a number of fills, the skin that had already stretched could have been used to remove some of the birthmark. But it was too early in the process and so no birthmark was removed.

But we will just take it one day at a time. We did get a call earlier this week that her surgery to remove the top expander is no longer February 19th, but has been bumped back (or is it up?) to March 4th. That'll give an extra two weeks of fills, so that is good.

I will update after her next fill! We would like to still wish all our readers a very HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!