New plan...surgery Thursday

  We spoke to the cardiologist on Wednesday about what happened Tuesday night.  The episode was caused by Lucy getting upset for an extended period of time.  When you get upset your heart beats faster and therefore needs more oxygen rich blood to continue to beat at that pace until you calm down.  Unfortunately Lucy's condition did not allow her to get enough blood to her heart and that's when her heart rate started to drop.  During the care conference we had discussed surgery in two to three weeks and were hopeful that Lucy didn't decide to change the plan.  We were wrong, Lucy is showing us she is truly on her own timeline.

  Rumor has it that surgery is scheduled for Thursday.  Because of the latest episode the doctors feel that Lucy cannot wait another two weeks for surgery.  I say rumor because they want to check how her infection is doing before going back into surgery.  If the infection looks cleared up and there is an opening in the schedule, they may decided to push it up.  If the infection looks bad, they would wait so the antibiotics can continue to work.

  Lucy has been stable since Wednesday, most of the time she is sleeping due the sedation medicine. The doctors are keeping her on pain and sedation medicine to keep her calm.  We do get an occasional ten to twenty minutes at some visits that she is awake and we are able to talk to her and have some eye contact.

On Friday, Dr. Ilbawi's nurse practitioner came in to discuss everything that will happen on the day of surgery and have us sign consent.  It was quite overwhelming to hear all that will go on, but it was also comforting to understand the steps before and after surgery.  For all those following, here is a snap shot into the whole process.  I won't get into any of the specifics of the Norwood, because you can google that and probably get a better description that I can explain.

Here we go.......the doctors will take Lucy to the operating room where there will be a PSHU nurse that is solely there to monitor all of Lucy's medicine.  Once in the OR, the nurse and doctors will review her current medication and decide if anything needs to be adjusted, added or removed.  Then they will put her under anesthesia.  Next Lucy will be hooked up to the heart-lung bypass machine.  The machine nourishes the blood cells and allows them to continue cellular respiration through surgery.  Then they will stop her heart with medicine.  Scary, right!  Once stopped the surgery actually starts.  It will consist of reconstructing the aorta, adding the sano shunt and removing the hybrid.  Next they will restart the heart and watch for any bleeding.  When everything looks okay, the bypass machine will be unhooked and they will continue to watch the heart for another hour.  Lastly, they will leave the chest bone open, but close the skin.  This will give the heart extra room until the swelling goes down.  Lastly, they will begin to ween the medicine and eventually go back in to close the chest bone.  All of this should take about six to eight hours.

If we could ask for specific prayers as our next surgery approaches:

-God's watch over Dr. Ilbawi and his team as they perform the Norwood procedure

-For Lucy's strength 

-Strength and peace for Mike and I as we wait through surgery

-God's hand over the entire process