Whoooo weeeee. Holy moly. Information overload today. Our day started at 5:30am preparing for Emily's pre-op visit. We were told that this day would be a long one and to prepare ourselves for an enormous amount of information. Boy were they right.
Emily will have her surgery at Egleston. The campus is beautiful and very updated...a huge change from MUSC in Charleston. We met so many people today, I cannot even begin to name them all. Most importantly, we met the surgeon, Dr. Kogan. He was very friendly and explained the procedure and any possible complications. The most difficult part of the surgery will be dividing Emily's one common heart valve into two functioning valves. If she has a nice, fat, juicy valve, it will be easy to separate. If it's a skinny, weak valve, he must work harder at dividing it and making it function properly as two. The surgery itself only takes about 3 hours. All the work before hand is what takes forever...running all the lines and IVs and getting her comfortable and stabilized. She can eat until 3am, breast milk only and can have Pedialite until 5am. I am so happy to hear this because one of my biggest concerns was her hunger. My small 9 pounder certainly shows us who's boss when she's hungry. Our report time to the hospital is 6am tomorrow. Yikes!!! I suppose I'll just get up at 2am, give Emily a feed, shower, and drink an enormous amount of coffee. Not like I'll be sleeping anyway...
We also got to tour the CICU and Step-down unit where she will go immediately after surgery. We were able to see a little boy (born 12-11-12!) that had the same surgery yesterday that Emily will have tomorrow. They wanted us to be prepared for the amount of tubes, lines, blood, bandages, and the breathing tube that will all be hooked up to Emily following the surgery. She will be on a breathing tube for a few days to make sure she's stable and then she will slowly ween off of it once she's met some milestones. The little boy didn't look that bad. He certainly had a million tubes and lines running out of him, but it was what I prepared myself for (Billy says the same thing). I am happy I got to see him. I stared-a lot. My neck was about to break off from staring at all the babies in there. They were all sooooo small. If you know me, you know I have a staring problem, so I was most likely judged by all the nurses. Oh well.
Tomorrow will be a long day. We can have family in the waiting room, but only two people are allowed in the ICU once she's done with surgery. I am not inviting visitors into the ICU (other than immediate family) because of the fact that only two people can be in there and it's just cramped and I definitely don't want germs. We can have all the people in the world come when we're in our own room (day 3-4). We can take Emily out to the garden in the wagons or strollers and let her enjoy a little fresh air. She loves the outdoors so I hope we can do that if the weathers allows us to.
Please keep us all in your deepest prayers and thoughts tomorrow. We have been waiting for this day since I was 27 weeks pregnant. We are so happy it's finally here and are ready for Emily to be a healthy baby!
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