10:45pm Update ...

I'm sort of happy to say that this day is almost behind us. What a whirlwind of events and emotions. Chandler is a champ at pushing her morphine button. She was pretty restless most of the afternoon and used up as much pain meds as the machine would allow. She was in and out and surprised us with some of the things she answered or commented on when we thought she was asleep. Tricky stuff that morphine. :-) She finally fell asleep about 9:00pm. I think maybe the morphine caught up with her and helped her rest. Her oxygen levels were dipping down pretty low and she wasn't breathing as many breaths per minute as they would like and the crazy (wonderful) machine kept on beeping. The nurse put her on oxygen at about 9:45pm. She has been sleeping like a baby ever since. Chandler will have to shift from one side to another (being propped up on pillows) every two hours through the night - with the help of myself and a nurse. Thankfully, she didn't wake up much on the last shift and went right back to sleep. She needs to get a good night's rest as tomorrow will be a big day. She will need to begin turning some on her own, she will sit up in bed (ouch!), and she will get something more than ice chips and water (yay!).

One thing I don't think I've mentioned is that Chandler will be 1.5 to 2" taller. We did our pre-surgery measurements at home on Tuesday. After we measured, Chandler retrieved a pair of my high heels and stood face to face with Andy and I to see just what her new vantage point might feel like. We were all anxious speculating what the post-surgery measurments might be.

Below is the picture of Chandler's xray taken on 6/28/2010. Top curve 64, bottom curve 46. This is a scanned picture of a print out, so it may not be the greatest, but hopefully can give you some idea what her poor spine looked like.

Thank you again to everyone who has taken the time to call us, visit us, email us, post a comment on the blog, post a comment on facebook .... you can't imagine how loved and covered in prayer we feel. For that, we are thankful to you all.