Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Broken heart fixed!

Cadence's heart repair is done!  Yippee! Yay! Hooray!  We were told to be there at 8:30am for a 9:30am start.  She went back at 2:30pm!  That is a VERY late start for a hungry toddler, but she took it like a champ.  Just when she reached her breaking point the anesthesiologist came back and gave her some oral versed.  I love that man!  She was a happy, silly girl after that.  The procedure was fairly quick and the cardiologist reported back to us by 4pm that she was finished and we would see her in the recovery room in a few minutes.  He said that everything went great!

Cadence woke up pretty easily and her biggest challenge for the next few hours was trying to fill her hunger void while lying flat (to protect the catheter sites from bleeding).  The hospital is expanding and we were able to get onto the new pediatric wing.  It was GORGEOUS!  Huge room, floor to ceiling windows with mountain views, wall mounted TV.... I was waiting for them to come turn down our bed and leave a mint on the pillow!  Best of all, though, (from a nurse's perspective at least) was how clean it was.  Loved it!  Cadence and I slept pretty well in her little bed and Brad stopped by in the morning with a snack before he went to work.  There was a follow-up ECHO (ultrasound of her heart) in the morning and the technologist was impressed by the size of her ASD closure device.  She said it was almost the size of the whole atrial septum.  We were also told that her right heart enlargement had already improved in just the 16 hours since the device had been placed!  Wow!  We had discharge papers by 9am but had to wait for her to get an EKG.  Just went I talked a co-worker into doing it the person who should have done it earlier showed up!  We were out by 11am.

I am so glad to have it done!  Things could not have gone more smoothly.  I can handle delays, but the fact that there was no life threatening complication... I consider that a win!  I am grateful that we have a hospital so close to us where we can get this done.  Pediatric interventional cardiologists aren't easy to find (especially ones as good as this one!) I am so thankful to so many people for their kind words, reassurances, prayers, and underwear dances!  You all are the best!


She was really hungry!

Managed to put away some fries

Room with a view

3 comments:

  1. Glad to see Cadence had a successful surgery! She is a real trooper! We go for Keaton's pharyngeal flap repair in a few weeks. It is hard to see them have to go through the surgeries required.

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  2. Christy, I'll be thinking about Keaton and all of you. Keep me updated!

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