Surgery scheduled for Wednesday at 7:30 a.m.

Today has been another quiet day. I have had the chance to just hold her all day with Jeff by our side. It has been a nice, much needed day, especially now that we know that she will for sure be the first (and only) case tomorrow. All of the emergency cases have been taken care of and now it is time to fix our little broken heart. We finally had the chance to sit down and meet with the surgeon. He has been in other cases all week. We had some questions finally answered. Tomorrow Gracelyn will receive her BT shut. It will allow her heart to work on it's own without the prostaglandin drug. She will immediatly be taken off of it. We had been told that they would be going in her side for the surgery, but the surgeon has decided that it will be best to go through the chest. It was really hard to hear. We planned on a little incision on our tiny newborn and instead she will come out of surgery with her chest having been opened. He doesn't plan on doing bypass, but wants to be prepared in case he needs to. This is what he needs to do to be prepared. We have to trust him. The BT shut is just a tempory fix. It will allow her to be taken off of the drug and be taken home to have a chance to grow. The BT shunt will only las 4-6 months at our altitude and at that time she will have another shunt called the Glen shunt. They will give her body some time to declare itself and decide what it wants to do. The surgeon has told us to plan on them rerouting her heart in the future so that she has a single ventricle heart. We pray that this won't have to be and that through time her heart will heal and this won't be neccesary. Today Gracelyn was able to meet Papa and Grandma Cheryl over the internet.

She wouldn't open her eyes, but she could hear them. We also had another great friend visit and bring us chocolate. Thanks Kathryn!

We appreciate all the prayers and pray that they may continue as tomorrow will be the roughest day yet.