The Day After Heart Surgery

Surgery day started for us around 5am when we awoke to shower, get dressed and head out the door. We arrived at Childrens right on time at 6:15am and once we were all checked in we sat for around 1 hour waiting for the nurse to take us back and that happen around 7:20am.

At the next step we changed Lexi into her surgical gown and met with the head nurse and the head anesthesiologist for the surgery and they explained the plan to us one more time and answered any questions we had before they took her from us and back to prep her for surgery.

As they took Lexi away she was sleeping and I thank god for this, because Roxi and I couldn’t have taken seeing our little baby crying as they took her away, because as you could imagine, it was already a very emotional time for us, as it was. This happened right around 7:35.

At this time Roxi and I decided to hang out in the family area, waiting for the call letting us know they had started the surgery and we received that call around 9:30am.

The next few hours were a little stressful, so we walked down to Tulleys (We really wanted Starbucks) and hung out down in the cafeteria and family area and finally decided we would drive over to the U Village to get some lunch. On the way out we ran into a friend (Joel) that works here at Childrens and we had a nice talk with him and he re-insured us that the team we had working on Lexi are the best out there.

After our fantastic QFC lunch, we returned to Childrens and hung out in the family area, waiting for the call saying she was ready to be moved to the ICU.

We finally received the call at 1:20 and so we headed down to the ICU to meet up with the surgeon. He explained to us that Lexis surgery went great and the only issue they had was getting some of the IV lines in her, but we were expecting this, because she had the same issue at her last surgery. He also told us that one of the holes in her heart was a little larger than they expected, but it patched up just fine and they were still prepping her to be moved to the ICU and we should be able to see her in around 30min to an hour.

We really wanted to see our baby, but were afraid at the same time, because her last surgery was a real shock to us when we first seen her and we were told this time would be worse.

We finally were able to go in the back to see her around 2:30 and she didn’t look as bad as we were expecting (see below pictures) Don’t get me wrong, she doesn’t look great, but she wasn’t all swollen like we were told she would be and she didn’t have any tubes down her throat with a “bone” across her mouth to keep them in, like she did last time and that made it a little easier for us.

She did have a chest tube that drains fluid from around her heart, two wires that were hooked up to her heart, just in case they need to hook up a pacemaker, a respirator tube and a drainage tube for stomach in her nose, along with a catheter and a few other tubes, sensors and wires for monitoring her vitals. Not an easy thing to look at, but the morphine was keeping her comfortable and that helped us a little knowing that.

We spent a few hours with her and around 6pm we decided to grab a quick bit for dinner. After dinner we went back and spent a few more hours with her, but around 9pm the lack of sleep caught up with Roxi and I, so we headed back to the Hotel to get some sleep, because tomorrow will most likely be a long day, because they will start weaning her off of the morphine and she will most likely need her mommy at that time because she will now be aware of her surroundings.

After a not so good night’s sleep, we arrived back at the hospital and to our surprise they had removed the chest tube, tubes in her nose, catheter, pacemaker wires and a number of the various tube and wires. Her eyes were open and she was hungry, but we couldn’t feed her anything for another 45min, which has to be one of the longest 45minutes.

Once it was time to eat, she started with 1oz of water and sucked it right down and wanted more, so after a 20min break we gave her another 1oz of water and she still wanted more, so after around a 1 hour break she drank 2 oz’s of milk and she finally fell asleep and has been sleeping ever since and it’s now 4:30.

We’ve had a few visitors today, including doctors, nurses and our friend Joel and everyone has said she is doing extremely well, and they will most likely move her to the main floor by tomorrow, which is one step closer to going home. If she keeps up at this pace, she’s going to blow their 9 to 10 day recovery time out of the water and we’ll be home in no timeJ.

Thank you to everyone for the great emails, phone calls (do people still use the phone? J) and Facebook/Twitter comments.

Prayer really works and I appreciate everyone for taking the time to do it for Lexi.