The Good and the Bad!

We met with Lynley's heart surgeon (who was extraordinary, by the way) shortly after the long surgery.  He informed us that the surgery went very well.  He was able to repair the holes in her heart, and she did great.  I guess by now, with all we've gone through, that I never fully breathe until I find out if there is a "but" coming from an informed mouth.  There definitely was in this case.  After the the holes were repaired, Lynley experienced heart block.  In simple terms as I understand it, that means that the electrical part of the heart is not making the necessary connections.  Because of this, Lynley was put on a temporary pacemaker.  If Lynley's heart corrected this on its own, the pacemaker would be removed and all would be just fine.  However, if her heart continued in this way, a permanent pacemaker would be installed through yet another surgery.  She had about a 75% chance of it correcting itself on its own.  Time would tell...

The rest of the news forever changed our family.  We would find out more at a later date, but we were told that the two holes that the doctors thought that Lynley had turned out to be one extremely large hole.  The hole that was repaired ended up being the entire size of her heart.  Her surgeon told us that was unheard of.  He had done over 100,000 surgeries in his career and had never seen a hole that large.  Wow! That was a lot to swallow.  Bottom line....Lynley is lucky (or blessed by God as we view it) to be alive.  More on that later!

Under the circumstances, considering everything that could have gone wrong, this was a very minor setback.  Our daughter excelled during surgery, was recovering nicely, and the surgery was over.  I decided to concentrate on that.  We would spend the next week waiting and waiting and waiting for the heart block to correct itself.  In the words of that famous engine...I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.

About 30 minutes after speaking with the surgeon, we were able to see our sweet angel.  I must say that nothing in the world can prepare you for seeing your child on a ventilator.  It was so hard to see, but, on the other hand, the love you have in your heart for your little one is able look past all of that.  She wasn't conscious, but she was adorable.  I held her hand (I couldn't hold her because of the ventilator and all of the wires) and talked to her like only a mommy can.  I wasn't going to let one more second go by without my girl knowing that I was there.  Have I mentioned that she is absolutely adorable?  We couldn't stay long at that time, because they had medical things to do to get her totally situated and comfortable.  Jason had to pry me away!  I'd been away from her for over six hours and I didn't want any more time to pass.  We went to eat with the group that was there to support us and came back a short time later.

Now our job for the next few days was to love on her (no problem there), help her recover from this surgery, and wait for the electrical part of her heart to kick in as normal.  So the wait began.....