Out of surgery!

Mary is out of surgery. We have been on pins and needles all afternoon, waiting for an update. Here is what we know so far. The surgery was over 5 hours long. They took strips of skin from her shoulder blades all the way down, a patch of skin from her stomach, and the two remaining patches of skin from her thighs. So she has several donor sites rather than one, which is not great, but I guess they needed all of that to cover her legs. The skin was put into a machine and stretched and made into some sort of a mesh, which was then used to cover the burned portions of her legs. They used glue and staples to hold it in place. That's all I know about the actual procedure. As for how she's doing now - she is semi-awake, in a lot of pain, is very loopy and halucinating, and is needing constant watching. She has about a million tubes coming out of her - a feeding tube, oxygen, IVs - and she keeps trying to rip them out. She also keeps forgetting to breathe. During the time that I talked to my mom, my mom had to tell her to breath 5 times. So my mom will not be leaving her side all night, I'm sure. Nor will she be coming home this weekend. Mary's blood pressure and heart rate are all over the place, and she is obviously in a bit of distress. The doctors have explained the situation like this: she has burns on 30% of her body, donor sites on 20% of her body, so 50% of her body has endured major trauma. When put like that, it's easy to see why her body is in distress! But we feel confident that she will continue to fight and endure, and hopefully heal as quickly as possible. Through the night and tomorrow she wil be very heavily sedated, but on Friday night they will taper off on the really heavy meds. Unfortunately the pain will be far from over. She will not be able to move or be moved for three days, not even to change the dressing. She will not be allowed visitors, except for very immediate family members, for 5 days. I'm sure that you all feel very helpless, as we do, but I know that the best thing we can all do for her now is to continue to pray for her. We will update again tomorrow after we hear how her night went.