Anna Grace - June 24

We are back the the townhouse... pre-op work is all done. We arrived at the hospital this morning at 8:00 am and did all of our admission paperwork and then headed up to the 6th floor to "Same Day" for our pre-op work. When we got off the elevator on the 6th floor I saw a woman standing in the hall. I thought to myslef... "she sure does look a lot like my friend Mrs. D" As I got closer I thought, "she really does look like Mrs. D" and what do you know.... it was my friend Mrs. D... all the way from Spartanburg to see us. I really only had about 2 minutes to speak to her before we had to head to "Same Day" but what a treat to have my friend come all the way to Charleston!

Anna Grace was a very brave girl today, but her stranger anziety is still in full force. She did not have to be sedated and she got her echo, her EKG and her blood work done. Her white blood cell count was NORMAL and surgery is a GO! She did however breakout in a yucky hive rash yesterday which I thought was a heat rash but the doctors today said it looked like "contact dermatitis" - which means she has come into contact with something she is allergic to. The more I think about it I think it is the laundry detergent which is used here at the townhouse... Tide. Note to self, do not buy Tide. It is not going to delay surgery and hopefully the rash will clear up once we get her to the hospital out of contact with the Tide.

After all our work up we talked with Dr Bradley, the surgeon. He explained what will happen in the surgery. He will be removing her shunt and suturing her Superior Vena Cava directly to her pulmonary artery. This will bring blue blood directly to her lungs. He said she also has a narrowing on the left pulmonary artery which he will enlarge by using a patch of human tissue. She also has a narrowing of the "Y" connection that was put connecting her aorta to her pulmonary artery so he will be putting a patch on that to make it larger as well. He said surgery tomororw will take about 6 hours. We have to be at the hospital tomorrow morning at 5:30 am. Anesthesia will take her back about 6:15 am or 6:30 am to start her anesthesia and get all the IV's and lines run and to get her intubated as well. Then she will be put on heart/lung bypass. Just like last time they will give us a pager anf give us updates about every hour with how she is doing during the surgery. After surgery she will go back to PCICU. Dr. Bradley said that most likely he will be able to close her chest at the conclusion of surgery tomorrow so we are praying that is the case and that her chest will not have to be left open. Amazingly... he said if all goes well we could be home in 10 days or so.....

So, there is a lot to be in prayer about..... please pray for Dr. Bradley and his team - this is a very major surgery, pray that Anna grace does well while on heart/lung bypass and that she can come off it with no problems, pray against chylothorax.

Thank you.