Recovery, day 0

God is so good and so generous.  Let's begin with a list of prayers that have already been answered:

• God sustained Lacey perfectly during surgery.
• Her heart was repaired successfully.
• The imbalance/asymmetry in her heart was not a complication.

 

While the surgery took longer than estimated (about 10 hours total instead of 6), there were no surprises.  The surgery was longer because they lost an arterial line towards the end, and had to put in another one.

 

Lacey is stable and resting comfortably in the ICU.  Everyone appears pleased with her condition.  The first 6 hours following this type of surgery are a good marker as to how the patient will do.  If these 6 hours go well, the patient generally does well during the rest of recovery.  So far, it has been 4 hours, and she's doing great.

 

It is possible that she could go home after 5 days, but it's too early to say with any level of certainty.

 

Here is the plan for tomorrow (Saturday).  She will be on the ventilator through the night, so her body can rest and begin to heal.  If she continues doing so well, they could take her off the ventilator tomorrow morning.  She will be on light doses of aspirin through the night to prevent clots, and they will start heparin (blood thinner) tomorrow.

 

We want to thank each & every one of you for your faithful prayers.  We know that God's favor toward Lacey and His goodness toward us are directly related to your faithfulness in praying for us (not to mention His faithfulness to provide everything we need).  So many prayers have come from family and friends.  And so many prayers have come from friends of family and friends of friends that we've never even met.  We are so grateful for so many people standing in the gap for Lacey.

 

Thank you Nana for taking such wonderful care of Jeremy and Riley.

 

Thank you Grandma Brandt for waiting with us for those long hours.

 

Thanks also for everyone's encouraging comments within the blog.  They are a treat to find, and a joy to read.

 

A really neat thing happened today.  We met a family who lives in Santa Barbara, who were aware of our family.  It turns out that friends of ours know some friends of theirs, and the links in our prayer chain came back around to us.  They are in the room next door to Lacey.  It's wonderful to feel so far from home and make a connection with neighbors, brothers and sisters in Christ.  Thanks TerriLynne and John for helping to make that connection!  Please pray for their sweet baby boy Rudy, about 5 weeks old, who had heart surgery.  We gather from his parents that his progress has been up and down.  He has a sign on his crib, above his head that reads "Go Rudy Go!"

 

Lacey's neighbor on the other side is also from Santa Barbara, but we have not met the family yet.  Half of the kids on the cardiac ward are from Santa Barbara!