Game Time (Updated 7/12 @ 5:10pm)

Sound asleep, resting up the night before surgery.

At 10am Wednesday morning they still didn't know if they would have OR space for Caroline's heart surgery to happen on Thursday.  Our surgeon started working his magic early and procured an OR for THURSDAY!  Thank goodness or else we would have had to wait until sometime next week.


Caroline will have open heart surgery to repair her complete A/V canal heart defect on Thursday, July 12, 2012.  She goes in around 7am.  We will see her sometime in the afternoon.  We are supposed to get phone call updates throughout the surgery.  I am going to attempt to keep updating this post as we hear updates.  If I have time after surgery I will post about the lead up to surgery, because it has been a whirlwind!


Please take a moment to pray for our beautiful little girl.  We know that everything is going to be okay because she is in God's loving hands (well that's what we keep reminding ourselves).


7/11 @ 10:00 pm---surgery is tomorrow morning.  Phil and I are spending the night at the hospital with Caroline because we will have an early start to the morning.  As I type this Phil has Caroline in his arms and is dancing with her.  It is one of hundreds of moments that I hope to never forget.


7/12 @ 5:45 am---We left Caroline's room and took her to the pre-op room.  She slept the whole walk down.  

Nurse Donny

anesthesiologists 

Team Caroline

The cute otter in our room.  Did you know that otters create a whirlpool
in the water to bring fish to the surface?  You learn new things every day!

7/12 @ 7:30 am---Caroline left with the anesthesiologists for the operation room.  She slept most of the time we waited though she did wake up long enough to give us a few of her amazing smiles.  She was back to sleeping peacefully as the anesthesiologist walked her bed down the hall away from us.  

Bye Caroline!  We love you!

7/12 @ 9:05 am---first incision made 


7/12 @ 9:10 am ---we got our first update from our OR nurse Donny.  He said that Caroline was doing great, went to sleep peacefully, and had all her IVs and lines put in successfully.  We were told she was having an internal echo (probe that goes down her esophagus to get more pictures of the heart before the main stuff starts) being done at that moment.  He said that she would be putting her on the heart and lung machine about 30 minutes later.  So that would be around 9:40 that she was put on the heart and lung machine.  We are supposed to get updates every two hours.  Since leaving her at 7:30 we cleaned all our stuff out of her room since we will now be in the PICU.  Then we went to the Cafeteria and had breakfast together.  Now we are sitting outside in the courtyard hanging out. 

Art in the courtyard

Beautiful day outside!
 We have too much technology in this family!
Hahahaha  I promise that we are actually talking and hanging out.
 We aren't just staring at our computers.  

7/12 @ 11:05---Got another call from Donny!  Surgery is underway.  She is on the heart and lung machine.  She is doing great and Dr. Gangemi is working on repairing her heart.  He will be working for a few more hours.  The echo down her esophagus confirmed everything they already knew.  Wahoo! Hopefully he isn't getting any surprises now that he is in her heart.  Should get another update from our new best friend Donny in a few hours. 


7/12 @ 1:31---Hello Donny!  The major part of the surgery is done! She is off the heart lung machine! Donny said it went well.  They are working on making sure everything is working as it should.  They still need to close her up.  Our next update will be from the surgeon himself.  We will find out if he thinks she will need future surgeries at that time and what exactly he was able to do.  It won't be for a few more hours. Then we will have to wait another hour to see Caroline.  Our surgeon's nurse practitioner has Caroline's giant pink bow in her pocket to put on her when she gets up to the PICU.  Bows make everything better :)


7/12 @ 2:15pm---Just met with her surgeon.  EVERYTHING WENT GREAT!!!!!! He was able to repair the hole even though it was "unusual"/"unique" in shape (We actually had an extra echo to look more in depth at this this past week).  He was able to split her common valve into the two valves she is supposed to have (tricuspid and mitral).  Her tricuspid valve has NO leakage (valve between the top and bottom chambers on the right side of her heart) !  Her mitral valve (valve between the top and bottom chambers on the left side of her heart) has mild+ leakage which is very normal! We will have to keep an eye on it as she grows but we knew that going into the surgery.  Her lungs are doing well with the new smaller amount of blood flow.  She has a regular heart beat and not an irregular heartbeat (this could have been a side effect from the surgery which would have required a second surgery to put in a pace maker).  We saw her from afar as she got wheeled into the PICU.  We will get to go into the PICU in less than an hour to see her!  We just sat there in disbelief as he told us that we were basically in the best case scenario possible.  Now we just need recovery to go well.  Wow.  My daughter just had open heart surgery.  My daughter is no longer in congestive heart failure.   All I can seem to do is smile and thank God for our amazing little blessing, Caroline.


7/12 @ 3:30---Phil and I just got to go see Caroline.  She looks amazing!!! They warned us that she would look pale...she looks just as pale as she always had to us ;) Tonight is an important and busy night.  Caroline is in a special room for cardiac babies that holds three children.  This means I can no longer stay at the hospital with her.  It is probably a good thing.  I can get a good night sleep at the Ronald McDonald House where we are staying.  Phil and I are allowed to come and go as much as we please. We can bring visitors in 1 or 2 at a time (aka our parents).  Oh she looks sooooo good.  We are so happy right now! Below are some pictures of her!

She has her head on a little gel pillow.
She has a ventilator in her nose, a line through her neck to her heart,
pace maker wires sitting on her heart (under the skin.  these are just precautionary),
a drain, a catheter, a line in her arm, a line in her leg, and lots of monitoring devices. 

Look at all those monitors!

7/12 @ 4:30---We took our parents in to see her!


That is it for tonight folks!  We are all probably going to stay out of their way and go out to eat at our favorite restaurant in Charlottesville, Vivace.  Honestly it is super hard being in there with her right now.  Monitors keep going off and they keep discussing every little fluctuation.  It is hard to see that and not get stressed.  I'm happy she is being SO closely monitored, I just can't handle being in there right now.  They said the FIRST THREE DAYS are the most important part of her recovery.  We need prayers to continue that recovery goes smoothly.  


Thank you for the outpouring of love and support that ya'll have shown us.  It means the world to us.  We feel so blessed to have such an amazing support system.  We feel blessed to have amazing doctors.  We feel so blessed to have an amazing little girl.


Love,
Megan