Thank you all for your kind words!
As Paul said, it was no secret, still isn't.
To fill you all in, my youngest had surgery yesterday morning to correct scoliosis (curvature of the spine). It went extremely well and she is recuperating in the ICU. She should get out of bed this morning and out of the ICU later today as well. This had been in the plans only for a few weeks. The condition was known for several years but had worsened significantly as she hit puberty.
I stayed the night in hospital and let her mom go home. Unfortunately there is no Internet access there so I spent a lot of hours watching my daughter sleep off the anesthesia and pain medicine. We met with the orthopedic surgeon again this morning and he showed us the before and after x-rays for comparison. The correction is excellent and we all expect Katelyn to have an excellent result.