It’s good to be home.

And not only for me, but very obviously for Emmaline. At the hospital, her temperament was muted (when not outright grouchy and frustrated) and her appetite was minimal.

Since we got home, though, she has actually exhibited her “normal” self. We’ve got her back on her routine: wake up in morning, drink a bottle of milk, sit on the toilet for a while, etc. Today, she drank a full bottle of milk in the morn, and subsequently in the late morning even had a bowel movement into the toilet! While in the bathroom, she even waved and said “Hi baba” and then “bye bye” to me, which is her two favorite (only?) sayings!

We also managed to rig her up so she could sit in a high chair at the dining table so she could draw or look at books. So we’re just figuring things out along the way, but glad for the help and resources that are available both locally (friends, family, co-workers) and afar (Internet). Here’s a photo of Emmie sitting in the dining room this morning (click for larger versions):

Lastly, a call-out of thanks to the Carrier family, whose three year old daughter endured a spica cast in the past year. We don’t even know them personally — they’re friends of friends who recently moved to the East Coast — yet they sent a lovely care package for Emmaline. Thanks so much!

Well this has been a tough couple of days. And that’s just speaking for me. For Emmaline, I can only imagine the confusion and trauma.

But thankfully, we’re home now. Emmie was discharged after 3 pm today. Thanks be to the Lord.

Her CT scan from last night verified that the left hip reduction was successful, and she was able to eat and drink at the hospital, if only a bit.

Unsurprisingly, once we got home, she was perfectly willing to take her normal position and drank half of a bottle of milk. Yippee.

She’s scheduled to have the right hip reduction performed in two weeks on Sep. 25. Which means we’ll have to do this all over again. Hopefully, the second time will prove less frightening for her.

The most immediate challenge will be learning how to care for her basic needs now that she’s in that cast, including diaper changes and especially keeping her cast dry. And, of course, managing her pain, for which we have some prescription pain killer.

So she refused to eat…

But Lois and the boys showed up this morning, and as soon as they did, she enthusiastically allowed Lois to feed her a bunch of scrambled eggs! The boys, of course, were eating breakfast as well, and I think that helped a lot.

I think, barring any complications we may get to return home today. But most importantly and wonderfully, she seems her normal self sitting in Lois’ lap eating, she even started talking a little:

Emmaline slept reasonably well last night and seems more accustomed to her situation. Unfortunately, she also appears to be very unhappy with me/us. As such, she has been refusing any liquid (milk from a bottle) or solid foods.

She’s on an IV drip, so we’re not afraid of dehydration. But until she does take some food, she can’t be discharged. The original intention was to release her today, but if she continues to be on strike, that won’t happen. Please pray that she’ll eat something. Of course, getting her to eat has always been an uphill battle since we brought her home from China.

Thanks for your prayers and loving thoughts.

UPDATE (8:40am): She actually let me feed her some goldfish crackers and even took some and ate for herself. Then she fed me. All this as I was holding her in my lap and reading some books to her. This is good progress, even though she continues to refuse liquids.

This is what she looks like in her cast (and watching the television above her bed):

I’m here in the hospital with Emmaline now. Emmie is in a lot of pain and has been crying on and off continuously. Even though she is extremely sleep deprived, she is unable to to sleep because of the pain. She hasn’t been willing to eat or drink anything.

The hospital is equipped with many children’s toys but unfortunately she is not interested in any. I took her out for a wagon ride around the building, and for a short while she was appeased. She is asleep in the wagon right now though only at a five or ten minute interval. Please continue to pray for pain relief and quick recovery.

I’m at the hospital, still waiting to see her. But the doctor just came out and reviewed the results of the surgery.

The doctor ended up performing an open reduction plus pelvic osteotomy. It appears that the condition has been present since birth or shortly thereafter, since there was the tissue that normally wraps the hip joint had enfolded inside the socket (thus requiring opening her up to fix it). But of course, having been abandoned at two days old, she never had the pediatric care to detect and address the condition early on.

The tough news here is that they only operated on her left hip — for various reasons, by convention, they only perform open reductions on one side at a time.

The prognosis is good and the doctor is happy with the results. He expects that either he or his associate will perform surgery on the other hip within a few weeks.

I’m thankful that the surgery went smoothly. The doctor reported that there was little blood loss. Thanks for your prayers.

UPDATE (1:10pm): I’m now sitting in post-op recovery room with Emmie, waiting to be transferred to her room. When I walked in, her eyes were open but glazed over. The moment she saw me, though, she started to cry (I think this is good, actually). I managed to settle her down with a bottle of apple juice. Here’s a couple photos of our dear suffering little girl:

Tomorrow our little Emmie will be undergoing surgery at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford. I will be driving her up at 7 am and the surgery is scheduled to begin at 8:30am and last for up to two hours. Please keep her in your prayers. Other than the procedure itself (see below), one of our chief concerns is for her ability to be consolable when she wakes up after the surgery in a hip cast. We’ve found that in general, due to her first nine months of life spent in an orphanage, that she’s not used to finding comfort and calm from any caretaker. As such, especially since she won’t know what’s going on, we ask you to pray that God would grant her special peace in spite of the circumstances; and that I will be able to comfort her in spite of her impending immobilization.

Here are some details on the procedure:

Her surgeon, Dr. Rinsky, after putting her under general anesthesia, will first attempt to do a “closed reduction” to repair her bilateral hip dislocation. In layman’s terms, this means they’ll simply try to manipulate her upper leg bones (femur) into the hip socket. While the odds aren’t great that this will work — generally the success for this approach is higher for children under 12 months old — we’re hopeful that it will, as it will be much simpler than the alternative.

The alternative, should a closed reduction not work, will be an “open reduction” in combination with a possible osteotomy. This means that some small incisions will be made to try to manipulate any obstructing soft tissue to enable the femur to get into the socket. There’s also a possibility that they’ll do some shaping of the hip socket (“osteotomy”) to deepen it, as her dislocation likely has prevented the socket from proper development. If this open reduction is required, then the surgeon has indicated that he’ll only do one side, and plan to operate again in about a month to do the other. In this case, as well, she’ll need to stay overnight at the hospital.

In either case, as I indicated in a previous post, she’ll need to be in a hip cast for approximately 12 weeks.

I will update the blog with further details tomorrow after the operation. Thank you for your prayers, and may the Lord’s kindness and grace be evident no matter the outcome from our limited perspective.