Tuesday morning

Well, here we are on surgery day... Emma Kate did great yesterday and enjoyed most of the day out in her wagon- it's so much fun for her! We even rode down to the cafeteria for dinner, and Emma Kate was in a slightly better frame of mind for eating, although we still only got about 1/4 of a ravioli and 2 blueberries in her before she started getting stressed out about us offering more food. She was happy to get back in her wagon for the ride back upstairs.

Surgery is planned this morning at 7:30. Sounds like there is a chance that they will pretty much redo everything that has been done. The pericardial patch will be removed and a slide tracheoplasty will be performed. They will also examine the reinsertion of the left pulmonary artery and determine if they need to redo that as well. I guess the echo showed "acceleration" there, and the CT scan showed some possible infolding of the wall of the vessel. The nuclear scan showed 70% of the blood from the heart going to the right side of the lungs and 30% going to the left, so there might be some restriction there. It's something they probably wouldn't get too excited about it if we weren't already opening her chest again for something else. Better to get it addressed this time and hope to avoid the need in the future.

We'll keep everyone posted after surgery and through the next few days, but we will be very busy, especially since Gretta won't be allowed in the cardiac ICU where she will be recovering for several days.