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.