Open Heart Surgery Updates

We will update as we receive updates.  Thank you everyone for your continued prayer, love and support. 

"He's got [her whole heart] in His hands"

Our last few minutes together before surgery 
... her last picture without a scar on her chest

7:10am - she's in the operating room

8:09am - she's doing well, all of her lines went in smoothly and they began opening about 10 minutes ago

The view from our waiting room

9:45am - she is on the heart and lung bypass and the surgeon is working on the repairs

10:45am - the repairs are finished, she is off bypass, and her heart is beating on its own! They just have to close.

11:15am - we just talked to the surgeon, everything went well!!! The VSD was much larger than they had anticipated so they repaired that and were able to fully close the ASD. Because of how large the VSD was, he is confident that the pulmonary hypertension should be nearly fully corrected just with the repair (if the VSD had been smaller, we would have been looking for another cause to explain how high the pressures in her lung arteries were) so he did not need to leave the ASD partially open as a "pressure release valve." He said that her heart is very "generous" in size due to the shunting and compensation. They also repaired the PDA. They are finishing up and we should be able to see her sometime around noon!

3:10pm - we were able to see her shortly after noon. It took a couple of hours to get her calm and to find the right balance for all of the medications which was really hard to watch. It was so hard to see her in pain and fighting everything and to not be able to comfort her with anything other than our voices. She is having some trouble with her blood pressure but is doing pretty well otherwise.  She's a fighter! She'd be much more comfortable if she'd hold still, stop fighting everything, and rest but they say it's a really good sign (although it is breaking our hearts). Her cardiologist just left and he shared with us that she had a VERY big hole, he thinks we must not have been able to get a good angle on the ultrasounds because everyone was surprised at its size, it's a good thing we didn't keep waiting.