Remember when I told you all about Riley's heart defects. Well the week before last was her surgery. Our long adventure started out Sunday November 6th, when we drove to the Ronald McDonald House of Durham. It's hard to explain how David and I felt. For myself, there was this giant ball in the pit of my stomach. I felt kinda queasy and I felt like I had all this nervous energy balled up inside of me. We ended up just driving around Durham for a few hours late Sunday night. We love just driving, it calms us. We found a Whole Foods, which was mildly exiting.
Monday morning was Pre Op. Pre Op consisted of a chest x-ray, EKG, lots of blood, vitals, weight and height. All the normal doctor stuff and then some. We spent a good 5 hours at the hospital taking care of it all.
Even Riley looks stressed. But she's not, she's just tired here. Every time she drifted off, they called her back to do something else.
David playing a game with her while we were waiting for the
PCICU (Pediatric Cardiac ICU) nurse to come in and talk to us.
She was nice, but a little OVER optimistic. You know what I'm talking about, the overly "everythings going to be alright" attitude. It was a reminder to us of the seriousness of Riley's surgery. She explained the details of Riley's surgery and recovery. She said that "on bypass" and "off bypass" were two important things that would happen. On bypass would signify that they had successfully stopped Riley's heart and put her on life support. Off bypass would mean that they had successfully taken her off life support and her heart was again beating on it's own. The expected stay in PCICU was 2 to 3 days and another 6 to 7 days in a regular room. She also talked to us about how Riley would look when we saw her. Outside of the machines and monitors she would be attached to, she would be puffy and bruised from fluid and surgery.
We took in all the information, and had very little questions. Truthfully, her cardiologist had prepared us and we knew as much as we wanted to know. The nurse asked that her last feeding be over with by 8 am and told us to be at the hospital by 9.
Monday night, as happy as can be.
Riley's self soothing technique.
We tried to busy ourselves that night. The Duke's Women's Lacrosse Team cooked dinner at the Ronald McDonald house that night. The commotion and conversation was a welcome distraction. We stayed up pretty late, playing games on our Ipad and Iphones. Whirly Word is an awesome game, by the way! David and I both drifted off sometime around midnight.
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