The BIG day

The day of Abeni's big surgery we woke up dark and early ;-) and nervously prepared to leave. We arrived at the surgery department and they took us right back. Dr Rutter was tied up somewhere so we got started a few minutes late. That gave us about 30 extra minutes to play with our sweet girl :) Warning extreme cuteness to follow!


I seriously die from the sweetness of this picture.


The "big OR's" don't have an induction room where I can stay with her till she falls asleep; so I had to hand her off to the nurse. I kissed her over and over and hugged her tight and Michael did the same. Then we passed her off and told her it was going to be ok. It was so hard to hear her crying for me as I walked away. We checked in with the reception in the waiting area and told them we were going to grab a bite. When we got back and checked back in she told us that since Abeni was the longest case of the day we could have our own private waiting area. Seriously so so nice and so sweet. We had a quiet private place to wait the big day out. It had "sleeping chairs," blankets, a TV, and extra large coffee cups for the coffee... In our case it was hot chocolate ;)

The surgery went fast. They started with some bronchoscopes and preparations. We got a call about an hour in telling is that they were ready to open her and get to work. Not gonna lie I cried a bit. Then about an hour and 15 later the ENT NP came in and told us that she was already getting off bypass! She figured they would be putting her on bypass but taking her off!!! The repair was done! It had gone well. They still had lots to do but it was going so well. They did all their post repair checking and things looked good. An hour and thirty minutes later the NP came in again and told us they were closing her chest and the Dr's would be right in to talk to us. After some happy nervous smiles and deep breaths the 3 surgeons walked in. They were quite pleased with themselves! And why shouldn't they be they had just given my baby the gift of being able to breath easily for the first time in her life. They had been able to make her airway 5x's the size it had been. She did require one unit if blood and had been having blood pressure issues in the OR, but now she was doing GREAT. She was doing so well in fact that they planned to take her breathing tube out later that day. They told us it would be a while before they moved her to the PICU, but that we should go wait there. An hour and 10 minutes later we were kissing our strong little angel girl.


She did so well over the next few hours and then came the big moment of getting that tube out. We were so lucky to have Michael's friend Eddy drive two hours to come and see us! After the tube was out I noticed some strange swelling on her chest. I asked the Dr's what it was and then the room got a little busy. There was lots of conversation and people moving around. It felt like air under her skin. While not common it isn't an unseen complication. A chest X-ray was ordered and the air isn't in any dangerous places (very little around the hear) it should just dissipate on it's own.


We feel so incredibly blessed. This has gone so much better then we dared to hope. Thank you to those of you who are praying with us. We are so thankful to God for the gift we have been given in our sweet daughter.

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Location:Burnet Ave,Cincinnati,United States