Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Where do I begin?

Last Friday night we sat outside the PICU waiting for Tyler to come down the hall from the operating room. We'd gotten fabulous news that his surgery went better than expected and the doctors were very happy with the results. Just then a doctor approached us and said the two words no parent ever wants to hear. "Bad news." She told us that everything went great for about an hour after closing Tyler's chest and then his blood pressure dropped. To make a really long story as short as possible, the surgeon and doctors don't know what happened but Tyler's little heart was working fine and then just got tired. They put him on a heart bypass machine and sent him to the NICU instead of the PICU. For three days, we waited, watched and prayed. Yesterday we got the great news that Tyler's heart had gotten the rest it needed and they were able to take him off the bypass. Whew! Today he did great! His vitals are all good, the doctors are lowering his medications, and now it's talk about when he gets to move to a less intensive unit.
This has been a week that I will remember for the rest of my life and yet want to forget. Thank you to everyone for your thoughts,prayers, and phone calls. Despite the situation, I did feel a lot of comfort that everything would turn out okay in the end. We love our little boy so much and are thankful that he has so much love and support from family and friends.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Tomorrow's the big day!

I'm sorry to all of you who are finding this out for the first time on such short notice. I meant to post this earlier and well, time got away from me.
Tomorrow we are taking Tyler in for his heart surgery! After 5 and half months of waiting, it's finally here. Just to recap, Tyler has an A/V septal defect which has to be corrected by open heart surgery or he will eventually have heart failure. Scary! So the poor little guy gets to go in for a 6 hour surgery and then spend between 7 to 14 days in the hospital recovering.
Today we spent 5 hours at the hospital doing all the pre-op work from drawing blood to an x-ray to meeting with the surgeon. It was a long day and Tyler did great! We got the go ahead for surgery tomorrow.
Despite how scary all of this sounds, I have really good feeling about this. I know it is something that has to be done and I've had 5 months to prepare myself. I do feel at peace about it. It's a great hospital with wonderful nurses, doctors, secretaries, etc.
I want to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers. We feel so loved and so thankful to have such wonderful family and friends in our life.
We'll keep you updated!