The Evening After...

Abby's surgery went great! The surgeons said there were no surprises when they went in there - everything was as they had expected. Abby went down to surgery at 6:30 AM, we had a chance to ask a few final questions of the surgeons and anesthesiologist, and then we kissed her, wished her good luck and watched them take her down to surgery prep. (It was VERY hard!) The nurse paged us as she said she would, an hour for surgery prep, 3 hours for the actual surgery, and 1.5 hours to close things up, finish tests and transport her. The surgeon came to see us at 1:00 and told us that they had repaired the holes in the walls of Abby's heart and successfully split the one common valve into two valves as it should have been. He said he thought the toughest part of her recovery will be clearing out her lungs, which have a good deal of fluid in them due to all the extra blood that has travelled through them when the heart had holes in it.

As for her recovery, the doctors say that she is in the range of "normal" - she's not on the fast track, but she's doing well. Right now she is intabated and has a machine breathing for her. Her heart pumps well all on its own, but they do have her on an external pacemaker in order to get it pumping faster and raise her blood pressure - which will help with healing. She's on about a million medications (see the picture below? The large screen shows her vitals, every one of the smaller machines is a pump giving a medication or fluid via her central line). They tell us the PICU is kind of "two steps forward, one step back", it's still forward motion, but it can get frustrating and we shouldn't let us. (Funny aside: we're so tired, and the other day the surgeon told us all this and said it's easy to lose patience when she's going backwards... which Linzy heard as "lose patients"... but was quickly corrected). A huge step for her will be when she's strong enough to be taken of the ventilator.

As for us, we are exhausted and still have knots in our stomachs. We know she is far from out of the woods, but we are so grateful to the doctors and nurses who are taking such amazing care of our precious little girl. We have an extreme sense of relief - after 12 weeks of anticipating this surgery - we're thrilled to be on this side of it. The nurses stepped out of this picture, but there are two of them at her bedside, working only on her, reading her machines, and taking care of her.... so it was recommended that we come home tonight so we're not useless later in the week when there actually is something we can do. However, we got the most amazing gift as we left the hospital; we went and sat at her bedside, stroked her hair and feet, and managed to get her to have one hand free enough that she could hold our finger. As we talked to her - her blood pressure rose, she fluttered her eyes and she moved around a little bit. Biological proof that she knows Mommy and Daddy.

We felt your prayers today, and can't thank you enough for all your love and support.