Meeting with the surgeon left me almost hopeless. No advances have been made in 15 years and he estimates the success to be closer to 75%. We are in better spirits this morning but are under no false assumptions that this will be a smooth ride.
Dr Eckhauser has four MAJOR things to do to her heart just to keep her alive. Her aorta is tiny so he's sewing that and her pulmonary valve together, they must be exactly the same height. He is cutting a large hole between the upper two chambers(creating a permanent hole between atria), if he cuts too large her electrical impulses will no longer work and she will need a pacemaker. He also needs to disconnect and change pulmonary artery and create a shunt going from the right side of her heart to the new piece he's created that will feed oxygenated blood to the rest of her body.
She has been back for almost two hours but surgery still hasn't started. They need to place four IVs and another arterial line before they can start the heart/lung bypass machine(which is sewn to her). Her blood has to be thinned down to water or when it hits the plastic of the machine it will clot. Then they have to cool her body to around 72 degrees to prevent damage to her body. For five minutes they stop her heart so that he can see what he's doing. When they are done with all the changes and have warmed her back up she will have a severe allergic reaction to having her blood pass through plastic. It will take several days for her to lose the added water that this brings. He said tiny pin holes will take them some time to get the bleeding to stop since they gave so many blood thinners.
We hope to have her back mid afternoon and that complications are few. We know she's a fighter and fervently pray for the surgeon and anesthesiologist.
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