Surgery update

Hey everyone,

So today (well, yesterday at this point) was surgery day. Everything went great. The surgeons were very happy with how well it went (when the head surgeon came out to talk to us, you could see the smile in his eyes). They were able to remove all of the tumor, or as much as they were able to tell. Ella held steady throughout the whole surgery, and barely bled. The only time her blood pressure dipped a little was when they pushed on the vena cava (there's a prefix i'm missing there -- inferior vena cava I think), which kind of makes sense, seeing as it's a major vein to the heart. The tumor had attached itself (but not invaded) to Ella's diaphragm, liver, kidney, and the aforementioned vena cava. They removed her adrenal gland (which was pretty surrounded by the tumor) but the kidney appears to be okay. They will be biopsying (I don't know if that's a word) the tumor over the next couple of days and let us know what type it is and what our next steps for treatment are. They also took a bone marrow sample to test just in case, and installed what's called a central line -- sort of a big-ass IV with a more direct route to her heart (through the jugular, actually) -- that way she doesn't have to have IV pokes in her arms and legs, everything can be done with this main line, and some medicines and stuff are too harsh to go into normal veins, so they can put those through too.

After a late start, and surgery that felt like forever, they gave us the call we had been waiting for -- they were finishing up, the doctor would talk to us, and then she would be out, maybe in an hour or so. We chatted with the doctor for awhile (he's super awesome, they all are) and then we jetted down to our new room in the surgical ward (speaking of which -- we're in the normal surgical ward, no need for ICU for my girlie :D). After a few short minutes chatting with her nurse, we heard a bed rolling in and there was our beautiful baby girl.

She's pretty groggy and stuff, but things are going well. Guess that's it for now. Onto the next step!

Thank you everyone for all your support, love, thoughts, prayers, food, help, and everything else. I don't know what we'd do without you all. Love ya!