HEART SURGERY

Today it was brought to my attention that the day and details of Caelin's heart surgery were not posted on here! Me being hard headed swore one of the updates had the information on it but when I read through the published posts, the information was not there. I clicked to edit the blog and part of the information was still there but did not "publish" to the blog. So I do apologize- but I definitely remembered writing it. Sean and I had been writing and editing different parts of the blog filling in different details. I am thinking that as we deleted and rewrote different parts of the post, the surgery part did not make it on.

So here is the news:

Caelin is going in for surgery tomorrow, Wednesday, March 21st. We found out over the weekend that this was the day they were planning for. The original surgeon was Dr. Jacobs but his schedule conflicted with this week so Cael's surgeon is going to be Dr. Chai. Dr. Chai came into Cael's room and went over all the details of the surgery. They will begin around 7AM and the surgery may take anywhere from 5-7 hours. Much of this time is dedicated to prepping. Around 6AM is when many nurses and doctors will be coming in and out to prepare Caelin. We will meet with Dr. Chai before he begins the surgery and then he will come talk to us right after he is finished. In between, there will be nurses coming out to give us updates. It is going to be an incredibly emotional day. We would be lying if we said we weren't terrified, but the doctors keep saying how optimistic they are because of how great Caelin is doing. The nurses keep commenting on how "pink" Caelin is. They are used to the babies being incredibly pale or blue/purple. They say his heart is over circulating for that of a hypoplast, which is a great sign for recovery after surgery. Also, the nurses and doctors are amazed at his levels of everything else (nutrients, blood, oxygen, etc) and at how well he uses his binky. Again, they say these are all excellent signs for recovery.

This morning Jen, the Cardiac Doctor's PA, came in to talk to Nikki about signing consent forms for the surgery. The official consent is for "Norwood and Aortopulmonary shunt and Transesophagel Echocardiogram." This is the first surgery of three to restructure his heart. The echocardiogram is essentially a little camera that they put inside his body at his heart so they can closely examine the heart before and after- as one last picture. He will also be getting his thymus removed because it is right in front of his heart and without it removed, the doctors would not be able to operate on his heart. We have chosen to have his Thymus donated for research instead of being discarded.

So sorry we didn't post this sooner!!!!! :/