It’s been 10 days since Lindsey’s muscle repair surgery and despite a few bumps in the road, she is healing remarkably well.

She was in the hospital for the first 5 days, with 2 JP drains and an admirable roster of IV and oral pain medications (Flexapril, Toridol, Oxycontin, Valium, AND Tylenol) — so she was happily high as a kite! We are now down to just two meds, both of which she can take in pill form.

She had one drain removed while inpatient, but the other one decided it was done with Lindsey in our hotel room. That caused a bit of a mess, and we had to go back to the hospital to determine whether she needed another drain placed.

They ended up just leaving it out, and we followed up with an ultrasound the next day to confirm that she wasn’t collecting fluid internally. Fortunately everything looked good.

So we saw our surgical team in clinic this morning and they were very happy with the way the incision is healing, with today’s blood lab results, and with the ultrasound results… so we have been SPRUNG!! We’ll be driving back to Michigan tomorrow afternoon.

Lindsey will need to continue to get regular blood tests and have the results sent to her transplant team, and she’ll be able to exercise and lift things once she’s fully healed from this surgery (in about 6 weeks). She will need to come back for a transplant checkup once a year from now on.

The picture above shows us with Lindsey’s celebratory Starbucks (it’s a gift from the heavens that Childrens Hospital of Pittsburgh has a Starbucks in it). I’d like to say that we’ll miss Pittsburgh, but coming here is always very emotional so right now I have to say we won’t. I do want to give a shout-out to August Henry’s in downtown though, where we discovered they have FUNNEL FRIES — yes, that’s right, funnel cake shaped like french fries – with powdered sugar and caramel sauce and chocolate sauce. We may have contributed to the local economy by ordering 3 orders of those… maybe. 🙂