Surgery Day and recovery

  Sunday night we decided to stay at the condo to get one last good night of sleep before picking up to stay in Oak Lawn for an undetermined amount of time.  So we were up Monday morning at 4 am to get to the hospital.  Lucy was to be the first case, so we needed to show up about two hours prior to be able to spend time with her.  We each got to hold her before walking her down to the operating room.  Mike of course let me hold her for almost a half hour.  I almost didn't want to give her back to the nurse.

The team called up and said they would be taking her around 7 am.  So we were able to just wait in the NICU and then we would get to walk down with her.  It's weird that even though it's all said and done and we know she is recovering well, I still can get emotional thinking about it.  About 7:30 am we walked Lucy down to the catheter lab with about seven to nine people.  Yes, it takes that many people to transport her.  I believe there were three nurses, anesthesiologist, respiratory, surgeon, fellow and cardiology (and probably others I missed).  Once we got down there we got to kiss her and then we walked with the doctor over to the waiting room.  He said the first hour would be all prep work, so it would be a good time to get food and coffee.  About nine o'clock the nurse came over and told us the procedure had started and Lucy was doing well.  About 45 minutes later, the nurse called and said the bands on the pulmonary arteries had been placed and they were working on putting in the stents.  The stents took another 45 minutes.  The doctor came to the waiting room to let us know the surgery was finished and they were just stitching her up.  He went over some x-rays to show us what was done and said Lucy did awesome.

  We were then walked over to the children's hospital to wait while she was in recovery.  About an hour later the cardiologist came to get us to see Lucy. She was still quite out of it from the anesthesia and really puffy from the extra fluids.  After surgery, she still had her breathing tube and her nose tube.  Then a chest tube to drain extra fluid from her heart, a catheter to be able to measure her urine and multiple IV lines for her different medicines.  She is on a lot of medicine to start with, but the doctors are working immediately to ween her off everything she eventually doesn't need.  Right now, she is on pain and sedation, a medicine to help the heart contract, a diuretic, heparin to make sure there a no blood clots, oxygen and food.  Here is Lucy right after surgery.

  She was quite puffy that morning on Monday, but when we went back to visit on Tuesday there was a significant decrease in swelling and she was starting to look like herself again.  She even opened her eyes for our evening visit and stayed awake for about another hour.

  The fisrt two things the doctors are looking to remove are her breathing tube and catheter.  The nurse told us last night, she is breathing on her own and the respiratory tube and machine are just there to assist if she forgets to take a breath.  We are hoping today the tube will come out along with the catheter.  It would be the first time we will see her without a breathing tube, so we cannot wait.  It will be exciting to see the doctors removing tubes and IV's.  It just means we are inching closer and closer to bringing her home.