Surgery Day

It was another early start to the day for the three of us. Ashley needed one more antibacterial bath before we went to the hospital, and we wanted to leave some time so that I could give her another blessing. After those items were taken care of, we left the RMH and arrived at the hospital at about 7:15am, still unsure if her surgery was going to be postponed until a later date. We waited in the same little room as the day before. Ashley wasn't impressed. She wasn't allowed to eat anything that morning again either, so we tried our best to keep her mind on happier thoughts.

At about 8am a porter came around with a bed to take her to the operating room. I guess that solved the riddle of whether the surgery was postponed or not. Tammy got to sit on the bed with Ashley on her lap while they prepped her for surgery. Nurse Ivy put some numbing cream on the back of Ashley's hands and the top of her feet because thats where the majority of the needles were going to go. The nurse also gave her another drink to help put her to sleep, and then I walked with them as they were wheeled upstairs to wait in the recovery room until the operating room was ready. That's where I had to say goodbye, so I gave Ashley some last minute hugs and kisses and left to go wait in this little dark waiting room just off the main hall. I'm glad it was dark in there because I'm pretty ugly when I cry.

Tammy joined me after a while and told me how the anesthesiologist couldn't find a good vein for the IV in Ashley's hand, so they gave her the gas instead. She was asleep within 30 seconds, at which point the nurse took her from Tammy and placed her on the operating table and Tammy was escorted back to me. We both cried for a bit in that little dark room, said some more prayers, and then the nurse came and brought us out to the real waiting room just outside the P.I.C.U.

We hadn't eaten anything yet either, so I went downstairs and got us some muffins and orange juice in the cafeteria. There was a computer in the waiting room, so I made a quick update on the family website as there were many back home who were waiting to hear how things were progressing. We weren't alone in the waiting room, there was another family there who's little guy was having surgery to remove a very aggressive tumour from his brain. Their situation seemed a lot more dire than ours and his procedure would last almost the entire day, while Ashley's was expected to be completed around noon.

Gramma and Grampa Olsen arrived around 11:30 and walked right by Tammy as they didn't recognize her from the haircut she had gotten a few days before. It was good to have them there for support. The morning had really dragged on and I was getting a little antsy around noon when we hadn't heard from anyone and we kept seeing Ashley's anesthesiologist running around the hallways with a very urgent look on his face. We later found out that it had nothing to do with Ashley, but with another little boy getting a pacemaker put in who not only woke up during his surgery but stood up on the table while the doctors had briefly turned away.

At about 12:30pm, Dr. Ross came around the corner and let us know that the surgery had gone better than expected and that Ashley was doing really well. She had done so much healing on her own that they only need to give her one little stitch to close up the VSD's and she was done. Another team of surgeons was responsible for closing her back up, so it would still be a little while before she was out. About an hour later she was wheeled from around the corner in the operating room to the P.I.C.U. and after they had her stabilized and hooked-up to all the necessary hook-ups, we were allowed to go in and see her.

She was in bed #3 and was slowly waking up when we came in. We were so glad to finally be with her again, though it was really hard to see her with all of those tubes and wires in her. She was intubated, had an IV in her neck, left arm, and left leg, she had a tube coming out of her chest along with some pacemaker wires, and some chest and toe monitors. They had her on morphine, oxygen, and some other sedation medications, and parts of her body were painted pink. I guess the pink stuff is some kind of antibacterial spread that keeps things nice and sterilized during surgery.

As she slowly gained consciousness, she started getting pretty irritated. She kept trying to sit up and pull any tubes out she could get her hands on, so the nurse had to tie her arms off a bit so she wouldn't do anything rash. I gave her her soother to hang on to but she just threw it right back at me. The hardest part was when she was staring up at Tammy and I with her arms out just begging us to pick her up and rescue her from all of this. It was really hard. Tammy went out to let her parents know how she was doing and while mom was gone the nurses took Ashley's breathing tube out. It was a lot longer than I thought it would be, and when it came out, Ashley called out in a tiny, raspy voice for her favourite person in the whole world "Enna! Enna!". I get teary just remembering that.

For the next little while she kept falling in and out of consciousness though it was hard for her to get comfortable. Every time she woke up and saw either Tammy or I standing there, she would call out to us and then fall back asleep. Once they put in an NG tube and started feeding her through it, she was able to stay asleep. Gramma and Grampa Olsen had a chance to come in and see her for a bit, and then we all went downstairs to get something to eat while she slept.

The rest of the day, the four of us took turns standing by her bed since it was too crowded in the P.I.C.U. for all of us to be in there at the same time. There was a lot going on that room, but Ashley was sedated and eating through a tube in her nose, so she mostly slept right through it. I took Gramma and Grampa Olsen to the RMH at about 7:30pm where they were picked up by Tammy's Aunt Anne, and then I got back to the hospital by 8:30pm. Tammy and I stayed with Ashley for a few more hours and then the nurses started turning off lights and telling people to go home, so we left reluctantly.

On the way home we stopped by Wendy's for some supper and a young homeless man outside asked us for some money. I offered to buy him dinner and as we were inside paying, he was waiting outside, and that's when the police showed up and told him to hit the bricks. Before he took off I ran out with his meal and gave it to him. I guess the cops were surprised to see someone being so citizenly, so I had to explain that it's because we were from Calgary, and that's how we roll down there. We told them the reason we were in town and after we chatted for a while, they wished us well and offered to say a prayer for us that night.

We got into our car, ate in the parking lot, and then went back to RMH. We said our prayers of gratitude for a wonderfully successful day, and slept a bit easier, hoping to get another early start on the next day.

The First of Many Long Days

We woke up early Thursday morning to be at the Hospital at 7am for our first appointment and to fill out all the necessary paperwork. There was a lot of waiting and not a lot of things for a toddler to do in the little room on the fourth floor that they had us in. Ashley wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything after 7am, so as the morning wore on, her patience wore out. I tried the typical goofy things I do to keep our grumpy kids amused, but the only thing that seemed to work was ballroom dancing in the hallway.

We were visited by a physiotherapist, an anesthesiologist, and a social worker over the course of a few hours, and then we met with Dr. Ross who performed Ashley's first operation. We hadn't met him before, so it was nice to get a chance to thank him for his work. He was going to perform this next operation as well, so we went through it with him and he explained what some of the issues were.

According to the last pictures they had seen of Ashley's heart from an echo that had taken place some months before, the holes between her ventricles were closing by themselves, but as they get smaller, the pressure at which the blood flows through them increases so it's hard for them to close completely without surgery. from what they could see, there was really only one hole in the left ventricle, but it branched into several holes in the right ventricle. It was going to make for a tricky fix and the effectiveness of the device that they typically used to fix VSD's was in question. They would know more after they took another echo.

We were really hoping that the echo would reveal that the holes had closed up completely by themselves and that we could go home early. We'd been praying for it. After getting her vitals taken, Ashley took a sedation drink (surprisingly well, though I suppose she was just happy to have some form of sustenance), and then we went in for her echo and ECG. She stayed asleep for the full 2 hour exam, but woke up just in time to get poked for blood work. We got pretty deflated when we overheard the technicians performing the echo talking about how the VSD's were still there. Open heart surgery was a complete reality now.

Ashley woke up in a really goofy mood and was really playful with the staff that she spent the morning giving her best cold shoulder to. That helped lift our spirits a bit. I left to bring a gift that Modus had sent us back to the car and to get a parking pass and some formula for Ashley now that she was awake and ready to consume. She downed it pretty fast but wanted some food-food. We had a few more administrative things to take care of before we could leave and get something to eat, and a few well placed head-buts from our starving toddler helped move that process right along.

We ate in the hallway and then made our way to the x-ray lab on the first floor. At about 3:30pm we were called in and the torturous process of getting a chest x-ray began. I brought her in alone because it's a bit too much for Tammy to see. I'll describe it in detail. It's a dimly lit room and I'm told to remove all of Ashley's clothes down to her diaper while the techs lay out a 2' x 2' sheet of plywood with a 10" diameter hole cut out of the middle of it. That hole fits over top of a little bicycle seat that Ashley sits on while I hold her legs down from below. Someone else holds her arms above her head as a glass tube is closed very tightly around her entire upper body and head, locking her into that position. The seat height needed to be readjusted 3 times before it was in the right spot, and once it was in place, we all ran around behind a wall while they took the pictures. Once the x-rays were taken, she was freed. She screamed the whole time and I don't blame her. She blames me though.

After that was done, we were told that it might not be possible to perform the surgery the next day and that it may be postponed to another time. It had been a long day and we were already pretty tired of that place, so we didn't take it as bad news. Maybe this would give her heart more time to heal on its own. We hoped it, but we wouldn't know for sure until the next day, so we were to proceed as planned until told otherwise. We left the hospital pretty confused and returned to the RMH where we gave Ashley her first of 3 antibacterial baths.

Ashley slept after her bath until about 7pm and during that time, Tammy and I talked at length about the situation. It was a faith defining conversation. We prayed and when Ashley woke up we had some supper from the "help yourself" fridge downstairs. We let her play in the playroom after supper and she went down the slide all by herself. We were really tired but we just wanted to watch her play for a while. We went back upstairs at around 9pm for her 2nd antibacterial bath and to get ready for the coming day. As we all got ready for bed, Tammy and I were very unsure of what the next day would be like, and we had no way of warning Ashley about what it would be like for her, but we knew the Lord was with us and that many prayers were being said that night for our little girl. As comforting as that was, sleep didn't come easy.

The Stollery

After we were settled in at the RMH, I went out to get some supplies for the week at a nearby Safeway, and then we tried to get some sleep before our 7am appointment at the hospital the next morning. The Stollery is on the University of Alberta campus, and it's a bit of a maze the way it's all laid out, but we got it figured out after investing some time wandering the halls. I took a lot of pictures over the course of our stay there as well, so I can almost recreate our wanderings in this post.

The picture above is the entrance off the street into the Hospital. We didn't ever use that entrance, as we would park in the parkade and walk through a mile and a half of much less friendly looking hallways to get there. Ashley liked this part the best, but to be honest, she didn't like the rest of that place at all.

After you walk through the rainbow tunnel, it opens up into a very large and sunny atrium shown above. The main floor of this atrium is mostly shops and a food court and then it's hospital from there up. I wonder if the designer of this facility also worked on West Edmonton Mall, because it really reminded me of the water park, especially if you imagine that those large ducts are really steep water slides.

The unit we were going to was on the 4th floor. You can either take the stairs or, if you don't mind waiting around for a while, you can ride in the great glass elevators. These elevators made Ashley a bit nervous, but she had been nervous of elevators for a while, since it seemed like every time in her life that she took one, it was to go and see someone who was going to poke her with something.

After the elevators, you cross this bridge to get to the Children's portion of the Hospital which is called the Stollery. The area just before you go through those doors is called "The Beach" and it's full of toys and books for kids to play with. This is where we would go to get Echo's and ECG's done before the surgery, and where Ashley spent most of her recovery time after her surgery. We never saw these parts of the hospital when Ashley had her first stay here, as we were in the NICU up until they transferred us to the Alberta Children's Hospital in Calgary.

I designated myself as the "go get it" guy for everything, so I got to see a lot of the hospital and became pretty familiar with it over our time there. There's a lot more to it then I took pictures of, but it was hard to get a nice looking picture of places like the basement where we got our parking passes from. One of the nicest places I found while running errands was this treed cafeteria just off a library on the 4th floor. We brought Ashley here on our last day of her stay at the Hospital, but I think the sunny, quiet atmosphere was lost on her, and she just wanted to go home.

It was a pretty cool looking place all around, but what makes it great is the quality of staff they have there. The cardiology teams are rated as some of the best in the world, so if you're going to have a procedure done, that's the place you want to be. I was nothing but completely impressed with how professional and skilled the doctors and nurses were there. They saved our little girl's life, so I guess I really can't say enough about them. The real miracle though, is that it's all for free. I can't imagine what the bill would have looked like if we had to pay for all of Ashley's treatments ourselves. I thank the Lord every day that we live in the country we do.

A warning, this next part might be a little preachy. I've heard a lot of stories and complaints about the wait times for people trying to see a doctor in our province, and I admit that in the past I've also done my share. I remember being a little put out when I became old enough to have to pay my own Alberta Health Care premiums. They must have heard about it because we don't even have pay those anymore. I've also been admitted into a hospital a time or two myself and found that the bedside manor of some of the nurses there left me feeling like they took it as a personal insult that I had to get my tonsils removed.

All of this aside now, I can deal with the waiting or a grumpy unit clerk (If your default facial expression is a grimace or a frown, look into becoming a unit clerk), because we've seen first hand that they will do everything they can to take care of you or your child if either of you become seriously ill or injured. If you're in a waiting room for what seems like forever, you got to know that there's someone on the other side of the wall who needs some serious attention, and that someday that could be you. When that day comes, you won't care if someone with a really bad zit has to wait an extra couple of hours to see the team of doctors who are resuscitating your child back to life on a table in front of you.

That's probably a little harsh, but spending as much time in and out of hospitals as we have over the past couple of years, you overhear some people say some things that can be pretty insensitive. Our system isn't perfect, but you can't beat free access to some of the best expertise in the world. I know our family wouldn't be the same without it.

The Ronald McDonald House

Ashley, Tammy, and I left for Edmonton around 4pm on Wednesday, April 22nd during a really bad blizzard. We decided Emma should stay with Gramma and Grampa Bourne until the surgery was over, and then I would come back and get her. Driving through Calgary that day was like a bad dream, but not too far north of Airdrie, the weather cleared and the roads were dry. We arrived at the newly renovated Ronald McDonald House around 6:45pm at the end of what looked to be a beautiful, sunny day in Edmonton.

We were one of the first families to stay in the RMH since it had reopened, so everything was sparkling new and there was almost no one else there. We were shown to our room upon arrival and then we were given a little tour of the facility. I took a lot of pictures during our stay there, so I can almost recreate that tour in this post.

Our room was on the third floor of the house as the second floor was still under construction. The hallways were very colourful and there were plenty of comfortable sitting areas and a laundry room mixed in with all the bedrooms. The bedrooms had their own en suites, two double beds, a TV, and the most comfortable recliner I have ever sat in. By the door there's a speaker, not unlike the ones outside of a Bishop's office, that plays white noise so that guests aren't troubled by any hallway traffic.

As cozy as it was, we didn't spend much time here at all, leaving as early in the morning as we could to go back to the hospital, and coming back at night as late as we could. It was the second best thing to the set up we had at the Children's Hospital where Tammy was able to live during Ashley's entire stay there. The RMH is only blocks away from the Stollery, and it actually took longer to get from Ashley's bed to the parkade then it took to drive from the parkade back to the House.

Every night before our heads hit the pillows, we would also put in a call to the unit that Ashley was in to make sure she was still sleeping well. It sure was heartbreaking to leave her every night, but the days were very long, and it was nice to get quality sleep for a few hours in such a quiet and comfortable place.

We barely saw the rest of the house until the day I drove back to Calgary to bring Emma up. She really really really wanted to see the "clubhouse" and spend a night there. Ashley was discharged that same day, but we were supposed to stay in town for a couple more days before heading back to Calgary, so we all got to stay 2 more nights in the House which turned out to be a nice little family retreat after such a stressful week.

There were 3 kitchens in total like the one shown above. There was a green one and a yellow one, and we were assigned to the red one. Everyone had their own cupboard in one of the pantries and a shelf in one of the fridges to store their food. There was also a separate room called the "help yourself" room which had three more fridges in it full of staples like eggs and bread for anyone to use.

One of the highlights of the kitchen area happened every Thursday when some lady Hutterites from a nearby colony would come with baskets full of ingredients and spend the morning baking goodies for all the guests in the House. I miss the cinnamon buns the most.

The rest of the house was for the kids. There were multiple playrooms and family rooms, a music room, a library, and a computer room for checking emails. The crown jewel of the entire house however, was the basement.

The mini basketball court wasn't finished yet, but we did get to play some life-size snakes and ladders and spend a couple of hours in the arcade room. They had a digital Pinball game that had 12 different pinball games on it and a couple arcade stations that had something like fifty old 80's arcade games loaded on them. It wasn't nearly as entertaining for the girls as it was for Dad, so we didn't spend a lot of time down there, but it sure gave me ideas for a recreation room of my own someday.

The girls had a blast the last couple of days we stayed at the RMH, and Emma even made a new friend there who is also named Emma from Cold Lake. Cold Lake Emma was almost exactly one year younger than our Emma and she was in Edmonton for heart surgery as well. We keep in touch with her family through Facebook, and we hear she's doing great!

We'll never forget our stay there and how great the staff were. It's an amazing resource for families and it's a miracle that with everything they provide for you, the bill only comes to $12 a day. We feel we got a lot more than our money's worth during our time there, so we'll compensate by making a yearly donation to Ronald McDonald Children's Charities. It'll have to come out of my recreation room fund for now.

Surgery Recap

I'm going to be writing about Ashley's second trip to Edmonton for her second heart surgery over the next couple of posts. It's not easy to write about, but at least we know it has a happy ending. We kept a bit of a log on a note pad they gave us at the hospital, so luckily I'm not going to have to rely on memory alone.

I'm not sure where we left off with updates on Ashley's progress, so I guess I'll summarize the events that led up to the second trip to Edmonton. Ever since her first surgery we've known about the second surgery to come. We didn't know how major it would be because that all depended on how well she would heal over the months that followed her first procedure. Overall she did extremely well. She was able to be weened off of all her medications and the oxygen long before the time came to return to the Stollery. Our hopes were high that a second repair would prove to be unnecessary as she seemed to be getting healthier and happier each day.

We were initially told that Ashley would be having her second procedure when she was about 6 months old, but when the time came, she was sick with a cold and it had to be postponed. That happened more than once and there were a couple of instances where a scheduling conflict with the surgeons in Edmonton also led to the procedure being postponed. We weren't too upset by all of this because we were hoping that in the meantime, her heart would have the chance to heal on its own and we wouldn't end up making a trip to Edmonton at all.

The first surgery was such a whirlwind that we really had no time to stress about it until we were into the recovery phase. This time was a bit of the opposite, as there was plenty of opportunity to worry and stress leading up to the surgery, but we were told her recovery should be pretty tame. I remember my biggest worry was the timing of the surgery for Ashley. She was at the age where she was too young for us to explain to her what was going to happen and why, yet old enough to not want to just lay in a hospital bed and sleep off most of her recovery.

I think a couple of months went by before anyone at our appointments even talked about scheduling a second procedure, and they weren't taking echos of her heart very often, so we got pretty comfortable with the thought that maybe it really wasn't going to happen. The call did come though, somewhat out of the blue as I recall, and we were suddenly uncomfortable again. April 23rd was the day were to check in to the Stollery in Edmonton and 7am was the time. I had been off parental leave and back at work since November, so with 9 days notice, I made the arrangements to take the time off and we began to prepare ourselves for what was ahead.

The Hunt

This is Emma and Ashley after a big time Easter egg hunt with their cousins at Gramma Bourne's house. Their haul included the new jammies they're wearing as well. This is Ashley after being told she's reached her chocolate limit for the day.

I put together a little music video of the actual hunt. It's my first time using the iMovie software on our Macbook Pro. I'll tell you it made the editing process incredibly less complicated and time consuming than the VCR and camcorder method my friends and I used to use when we were making our stunt films so long ago. I think I may take a crack at re-editing those cherished classics someday, if I ever find the time.

Zoo Birthday

We made a big family trip to the Zoo for Aunty Alison's birthday on April 11th. We took this picture in the Hippo theatre. Actually Alison took this picture, so we got everyone who came along except the birthday girl. We usually take a lot more pictures at the Zoo, but not so much this time. I did manage to snap one of Ashley's face as she sat in my arms, mesmerized by the giraffes. She got pretty upset with me because I wouldn't climb over the fence and introduce her to the giraffes personally. Maybe when she's a bit older.