surgery is about to begin.

9:20 am.
the surgeon is washing his hands and about to get started.
continued prayers.
please.

*right after I posted we were told that the incision has been made. it has begun. We will get another update in an hour. And I will try to breath.

the day of the glenn...

ready or not, here we come!We were up at the hospital at 6am to check in, where we had to wait until 7:30 for surgery time. We tried to entertain little miss, and even got her to sleep for a little while...

Then it was time to hand her over to Dr P. (the anesthesiologist), who just carried her back like she was his own baby. It is always hard to see her go back to the OR but we kind of liked it this way. It was like we were such good friends, and felt so comfortable just letting him walk away carrying her down the hall. They took her in at 7:30 and we were told that it would take an hour and a half to get the prep done and surgery started...we will get the update when surgery has started and we will update here.

sooo...

we are home from the pre-op shenanigans at the hospital. Note to self...next time we need blood drawn call in the iv team FIRST and skip the lab people... Saves A LOT of screaming that way.

We have surgery scheduled to start at 7:30 am. Which means we need to be at the hospital at 6. Early morning for us. We should get updated about every hour throughout the surgery so be sure to check in on the blog for updates, we will post them there. We don't know how long the surgery will go but the NP told us it will last through the morning so I would think lunch time would be the earliest we'd be done.

Also we won't hold our breath but the NP told us she has seen kids go home 7 days after the Glenn. She did, in the same breath, say she'd also had some stay a month post-op. But we all know darla jane likes to set star patient records :-)

Thank you everyone for your continued prayers, love and support.

surgery date reschedule..

but it's not because of us this time... and there is no cause for concern

while sitting at the hospital, recovering from the cath we got a call from the cardio surgery scheduling department. Because of new babies that are being born, the dr is needing to rearrange his schedule. And because Darla Jane is doing well, we are more flexible with our date. It's not a big change, we are now scheduled for Friday, the 9th...So that gives us one more day of snuggles, laughs and prayers before her big day.

star patient...as always

the procedure went well. we were able to watch the video of what they did with the dr. and he said he would put it on a disk for us. so when we get that, i will have to post it for anyone interested. but the stent got placed where they wanted it too and she stayed stable throughout the whole procedure. we will be staying the night like we thought...BUT on "the floor" instead of in the icu! so that is good news too.
we will just call today a warm up for next week. little miss remembers how to be the "easiest hlhs patient" and her mom was able to work on not being to anxious (mostly).

they are getting her settled in recovery and then we will be able to go in with her.

Pre-Cath...

Darla Jane is, as I type this, down in the cath lab. We won't get any updates during...just a low down when she is all done. So while we wait I thought you might like some pre-op pictures.

Here's little miss with her hospital gown on and ready to go... her dad was really excited to be there too. We couldn't feed darla jane for 3 hours pre-op so she was mad mad for a while. With dad's magic touch she was able to get some sleep and not worry about her hungry belly. ...and now we wait for the page that she is done. and ok.

Cath today.

We will be at Primary Children's Medical Center today. It's the day of Darla Jane's heart catherization. They will go up an artery near the groin area and feed a wire to her heart. There they will be able to better see the blood flow, measure pressures and most importantly place a stent, which is a wire mesh ring in her aorta where there is some narrowing. They will hopefully be able to place an adult size stent so that as she grows they will be able to slowly stretch it to fit her full grown heart. She will need to go in every year or 2 to have this done.
This is a picture of a stent. (courtesy of google images) it is narrow as they feed it into place and then a little balloon is inflated to stretch it out. Hers will be stretched little by little as she grows, through subsequent procedures. I'm not sure that is how long hers will be though.

Today she will need to go under anesthesia, which is always a little scary, but she is over her cold and ready to go so she should do great.

Little miss will need to stay at the hospital over night which is standard procedure when a stent is place in case it moves. A chest xray in the morning will confirm that is hasn't and she should be back home again tomorrow.

We will definitely update on how it goes.