Surgery Day

Yesterday was exhausting. Good thing is, WE SURVIVED IT! Every one of us. I am so proud of my sweet daughter. I'm proud of my husband, my children and myself. What we had to do yesterday was not fun, but we did it. We made it through such a hard day because of SO much support and Heavenly Father's love. I'm grateful to my parents, sister and brother-in-law who took care of my other children when they wanted to be at the hospital so badly. We couldn't do it without them. I am grateful to wonderful friends. I had so many friends offer to help with my other children. My sweet boy was able to be picked up by some great friends and kept until my sister could get him. We spent a lot of the afternoon with both of our parents by our side, waiting for Grace to get through surgery. It was such a relief to hear she was done and okay. They kept us updated all day long. It took a lot longer than we anticipated. She was in the OR for nearly 9 hours. She had a lot of scar tissue to get through. Around 3:00 we were finally taken back to the CICU (Cardiac Intensive Care Unit-Room 6) to see her. She looked fantastic. It was much better than when she was a baby. She was quite pale, but she was pale pink, and not so purple anymore. She had tubes, and cords and wire coming out of EVERYWHERE.

Her grandparents were able to go in and see her right away. She was still very sedated, but when she heard her dad's voice, she began to move. We tried to talk to her to let her know we were there and she would respond. She was extubated by the time we got to her, but she still had something in her mouth to keep her airway open. She kept trying to take it out. Once she was able to try to push it out herself with her tongue, they let it come out. She would try to talk, but her voice is very raspy from all the tubes she had down her throat. She started waking up some and became very anxious. She just kept whispering, "get it off." She has chest tubes in and she is really uncomfortable with them. We gave her more morphine, and have kept her comfortable with it since then, and she has done much better.

Gracelyn's Aunt Camee and Uncle Kurtis came down for a visit and later her Uncle Jared and Aunt Amber came to see her. Jared and Amber brought her a darling heart bear. After surgery she quickly developed a fever. The nurses told us that it was typical after being connected to the heart lung bypass machine, but they were concerned with how high it was. We spent several hour with rags on her head, wet blankets on her legs and the ice pack on her chest. It slowly began to drop around 10:00 pm and we were comfortable enough to be able to sleep. Primary Children's has a new area in the hospital that is an extension to the Ronald McDonald house. It is really nice. The have rooms, showers, laundry rooms, kitchen, computers, meals brought in....everything we could possibly need to be comfortable while here. Jeff and I stayed the night in one of those rooms, it is just one floor above the CICU and worked perfect since we didn't want to leave the hospital.

 It was such a long day, but it is so great to have that day behind us.