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.
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