One Surgery Down, One to Go

Today was the day! Caitlin had her first surgery to start the process of removing her birthmark (a congenital melanocytic nevus). It appeared on her right shoulder about 3-6 weeks after she was born. We were recommended to a plastic surgeon, Faizi Siddiqi, down at Primary Children's back when we were concerned about it. We decided to keep an eye on it and haven't done anything with it since. As she grows though, it grows with her. She's become very self conscious of it and gets embarrassed easily with swimming suits or certain shirts where it would peak out of the sleeve. This seemed to be the perfect year to get it taken care of since we have met our deductible and co-insurance.

We met with Dr. Siddiqi about 8 weeks ago. We decided to go the route of putting a tissue expander in her arm above her birthmark for approximately 4 weeks. After her skin is all stretched out they will go in and cut out her birthmark and cover it with that extra skin. They had to special order the tissue expander to fit the exact spot that will be removed, therefore it took the 8 weeks to get scheduled for the first surgery. Caitlin was getting anxious about the surgery coming up. Every time we talked about it she told us not to because she didn't like thinking about it. They have pre-surgery classes that you can sign up for. I kept putting it off thinking we didn't need to go or that I didn't want to take 3 hours out of my day to just go to this class...but at the last minute I decided to take her this week. We picked the older 3 girls up after school and headed straight down there. It was so worth it just to ease Caitlin's mind. Before she was insistent on not wearing their p.j.'s...not after the class. She was worried about them putting needles in her arm before she got asleep...not after the class. They explained everything to the class by letting them see and play with doctor "toys". She was so calm for the remainder of the week that it made it all worth it! Caitlin was also super excited about the slushees she would get and the movies she could watch. She was a trooper!

We started heading down to SLC at 6:00 am and checked in at 6:45 am. Her surgery wasn't scheduled until 8:15, but we needed to check in early enough to get all the paper work done. I think Caitlin wanted it to be done quickly, she kept asking when we were going to go in for surgery. Finally they came. They gave her some "happy" medicine to calm her down in case she was anxious when they got to the operating room. We said our "See ya Later's" and she headed down the hall. About an hour later they were done and I went back to see her. She was still kind of out of it and it took her another couple hours to come to. It's always scary to see them out of it and not acting like themselves, but she quickly became the happy talkative Caitlin soon enough.

We will be going back in 2 weeks to insert more saline and then once a week, for the next 3 weeks, after that I will attempt to do it at home. We'll see how that goes! :)

Sorry if this grosses some of you out - this is what a tissue expander looks like. Kind of odd looking...it's like a rock was put under her skin. These next 6 weeks should be interesting! :)