What a day! Hannah and her heart surgery...

What a day! Yesterday was quite the experience for us. We woke up at 3:30 in the morning, mainly because both of us were sleeping on the same twin bed in Hannah's hospital room. Not the most comfortable set up :) We stayed up so we could hold our little princess before they took her away for her heart surgery. We wont be able to hold her for about 3-5days.

Dr. Gary Loflin performed the surgery. We found out through a friend of ours who's son also had heart surgery here that Dr. Loflin is one of the top heart surgeons in the nation. What a peace of mind that gave us to know she was in good hands! Hannah was supposed to be his second patient of the day but due to illness the patient ahead of us had to cancel and we were bumped to first surgery of the day and she also ended up being his only patient for the day... which is odd since they are usually booked. It is also odd that they had an opening in the schedule and there usually aren't openings like that. We feel the divine hand our Heavenly Father intervened. Hannah would not have made it much longer than a few weeks. She was going into heart failure.

The doctors were in the room shortly after 7:00 am to take little Hannah away. Dr. Loflin said that the operation would take about 2 and 1/2 hours. Due to the preparation time they didn't make the first incision until about 8:45 am. Less than one hour after they had begun the nurse practitioner that was following Hannah came out and informed us that they had closed the aorta pulmonary window (AP window) the second heart defect that they had discovered. This defect was much more serious than what they had originally thought and that is why she had to have this operation so soon.

By the time the they got done it was about 1-1:30. It took a little longer than planned. Dr. Lofin came down to talk with us and said the TET repair was more tedious and difficult than normal TET babies due to her anatomy. (she has bilateral superior vena cavae... which is fine it just made it harder to repair. This is when there are two veins dumping the blood from above her heart into her heart. Most people only have one but she has two). So Hannah is proving to already be mischievous :)

They took her to the PICU and we got to go in and see her around 2:15 pm. She looked like they said she would. She was doing good.. her heart rate was having trouble staying in rhythm like It should be so they were watching that( normal after a surgery), and then they were watching some bleeding she was having out her chest tube. We went outside to get some fresh air, take a breather, and make a few phone calls. While I was talking to my mom the PICU called to tell us they were taking her back to the operating room due to the bleeding. They fixed the bleeding and also put in a temporary pace maker. That was at 3pm. It was 6pm by the time we got to see her again.

Hannah is doing good. At the moment she has about 10 different machines doing the work for her. This is to allow healing. She is on a breathing tube and will be for a couple of days, due to how swollen she is they wont close her chest for a few days, she has a pace maker for her heart rhythm but the doctor said this is typical and once all the swelling goes down her heart should start working the correct way.... if not then she will have to use a permanent pace maker but this is very unlikely. She has had some problems with her blood pressure today but they are watching her close and doing what they need to do. She is in really good hands.

The hardest part is over but she still needs to prove her body can work on its own and this process takes about 3-5days. Once she comes off all the machines they will move her out of PICU to the post op floor for another 4-days. We will be in the hospital for about 2 weeks. For this week Rick and I are staying in the Ronald McDonald house across the street. He will go back to work on Monday and I will stay in the room with Hannah once she goes to the floor.

So we are working our way through the first and hardest hurdle by far. She still has a few other surgeries to be done in the future regarding her nose and her hand and hopefully they can do them at the same time rather than putting her to sleep twice. She shouldn't need another heart surgery until she is a teenager. That surgery would be to fix the pulmonary valve that allows blood in. It is supposed to be a one way door that lets blood in but Hannah's is littler than normal and will leak a little bit. They say it can leak for up to a decade and be fine. When they do fix it they will most likely put a shunt in. This is as long as Hannah does what the medical research shows. They will of course always be watching her closely.

So how do we feel: We talked about it last night and it is so hard to explain. One reason is because we feel like we should be frantic but we don't. We still feel that amazing sense of peace and comfort. It does feel like we are having an out of body experience... we know our 1 month old baby just had heart surgery but yet it is so surreal. Kind of like that feeling you have when you wonder if you are dreaming.. is this real? Yes it is real, our daughter did indeed have open heart surgery. For as strange as we feel we also feel so much peace. We also feel like we have been hit by a bus due to the lack of sleep we had and having a long and stressful day yesterday. We got up at 3:30am and went to bed at 11pm.

We are cheering our little girl on and once she wakes up and gets to the floor she has made it through the iffy stage. She is a trooper and has been from her birth... she can do it! She is strong and oh so beautiful! We have all the hope in the world for her :) We will keep updates coming as they happen! Thank you all again for the love and support offered, it has deeply touched our family!

With Love,
Ricky and Sam