Norwood Day! Pat is in surgery.

3:00 PM

Our aggressive waiting has paid off. We spoke with Dr. Cohen almost an hour ago. Pat is out of surgery, and they are getting him transferred to his new CICU room. Dr. Cohen said the surgery went smoothly, and there were no problems or issues. He did say that Pat is not out of the woods yet - he has just had a very major surgery and a significant physiological change, and has a lot of healing and adjusting to do. He will be swollen and puffy and utterly still. But that's a good thing.

His chest is still open, and will remain that way until the swelling goes down. It's not an open wound - there is a covering over it - but it also makes it easier for the pacing wires and chest tubes still in there.

We are now putting our mad waiting skills to use waiting to see Pat in the room he'll be in for the next few days.

Our little boy has gotten this far - but he still has a distance to go. We would have spared him all of this if we could, but we want to have him in our lives for years and years, and we have to do this if we want that to happen. It's worth it.

12:20 PM

We just got another page. The receptionist passed on the message that the repair is almost complete, and they will begin the re-warming process shortly. They induce hypothermia to do the repair, and Dr. Cohen told us that the re-warming process is long, slow, and takes a variable amount of time.


We are very glad to hear that the main part of the surgery appears to be over, and are going to re-double our efforts at waiting.

10:15 AM

I just got the first page. I called the NICU desk when the pager went off, and the receptionist told me we were paged to inform us that little Pat is all hooked up - he's intubated, has his lines all in, and sedated. Now the surgery proper is beginning.

So far, so good. Now we go back to our task: waiting.

8:30 AM

Pui and I got up at 5 AM, even though our alarm was set at 5:30. We spent a lot of the morning with Pat, until the anesthesiologist came for him at about five minutes before 8. We got to give him a quick kiss and orders to cooperate with the nice doctors, and we watched him get wheeled into the OR. Now we are finally eating breakfast. Trying to eat breakfast.

We will get paged four times. Once when they have all of the tubes put into him - for samples, for blood control, for drugs. Once when they put him onto the Heart-Lung machine. Once when he's taken off the heart-lung machine, and once when everything is finished.

The waiting has begun.