Maddie Update

First I just wanted to say thank you all so much for your support, emails, calls and concern for Maddie. I have really been overwhelmed by all the support we have recieved.  We definitely have felt your prayers.

We went and had her pre-op appointment yesterday.  It went well. I was secretly hoping they would be shocked and tell me it had closed up on its own. But thats not what happened. Everything is just as it was. They went over all the details with Maddie and me.  I would be lying if I didn't say I am completely overwhelmed.  I feel like I just need to let some of the stuff they said go in one ear and right out the other.  This is just so huge and out of my control all I can do is trust. And pray.  The doctors are so optomistic and assure me that this is 'an easy fix' in the world of heart surgery.  But in my world this is huge and scary and I just don't like it. ;(

A lot of people have sent emails asking me what exactly Maddie's heart problem is, so let me take a minute to explain. She was born with a hole in the atrium of her heart. When she was a baby they thought it would close on its own and told us not to worry about it. Two years ago our primary care doctor heard the murmer again during a routine physical and really encouraged us to see the pediatric cardiologist again.  We saw him that summer and he took measurements, readings and pressures of her heart and said we would just use these as the baseline and he would see her every year until she graduated and just compare them each year.

When we went to her appointment last August, it became very apparent that their had been changes.  The right side of her heart was slightly larger than it was just a year before.  What is happening is her lungs are getting twice as much blood as they should be.  So a portion of her blood isn't going thru the whole body, its just going in an endless circle.  This is making the right side of her heart work harder and the fear is that it will continue to get larger over time. 

She currently has no symptoms at all.  Which made this all the more difficult to decide to do this. However, if she didn't have it done it would be to great of a risk for her to ever carry a baby and the risk of stroke and heart failure are huge risks at a young age.  There are people that have this defect that live their whole life and have babies and are completely fine. But their are also people who have massive strokes at 26 years old.  We really feel that God has been in this and used the doctors in her life to find out about this while she is young (some people live their whole life and never find out about it until its too late).  I feel a great deal of pressure making such a huge decision for her, but we know this is whats best for her. The doctor has said the recovery is much quicker and better before puberty.  The longer we wait, the worse and more painful her recovery would be.  So now is the time.

We are all set for Monday.  They told us yesterday that they had a  baby that came in that is needing surgery so we have been bumped to around noonish.  The surgery will be 4-6 hours long.  Once she is out of surgery she will be taken immediately to ICU for the next 2 days.  Their will be milestones each day that they will be looking for.  First one being surgery going well. Second one being coming off the ventilator, waking up and talking, etc.  Once they have the labs that make them happy, they will want to remove the lines in her left arm and neck that will be stitched into her skin.  She will also have a tube coming out of her chest for a few days which will help with draining fluids off of her heart.  Once she loses all this stuff she will then be moved to the main floor where we focus on recovery, getting up and walking, drinking, eating, etc.

Please continue to pray. Pray for the details. That she would have no problems coming off the vent, that her heart would take back over with no problems, that there would be ZERO complications and everything would go smoothly. I am just praying that the presence of Jesus would be so strong in that OR and that he would guide the surgeons hands.  And please pray that she wouldn't feel too much pain.  I'm so concerned about the amount of pain she will be in and am just praying that God would take that from her. 

Thank you so much for your support. I will probably just update on here as I have time thru the week.

Kristy