Tuesday - March 16, 1999
6:00 am - Report to surgery - Took some vitals. The anesthesiologist came out and told us the risks and gave us some information. Dr. Clarke's fellow came out and gave us the risks of the surgery (not fun), and told us what to look forward to. Then at 7:55 a nurse came out and took our Leksie away (VERY HARD). We should be informed every hour of her progress. The surgery should be done around 12:00-1:00 pm.
8:00 am - Surgery, Anesthesiologist takes over first and around 9:00 am, Dr. Clarke takes over for the surgery. Surgery should take about 3 to 4 hours.
8:40 am - We take Misti to the Milking machine (two at a time - wow!!) - Leksie couldn't eat past 5:30 am, so Misti was full
10:00 am - Our informer is Esther Carpenter, she said at 10:00 am that the large hole is tucked high under the tri-cuspid valve. They have to go thru the valve to repair the hole. She is now on the heart/lung machine (so the machine is doing all the work) which is going well.
10:40 am - Esther came and told us they are warming the heart to get it to start up again. The cavity is still open and they had to put on a pace maker to keep her heart rate accurate, the pace maker should be removed after awhile. Her blood pressure was high so they gave her something to bring it down. It's not that it's bad for it to be high its just to soon for the pressure too get high, they want it to stay low for awhile.
11:00 am - Esther told us the cavity is closed and she is off the heart machine
11:15 am - Dr. Clarke came out and told us the operation went very well. The hole was larger than they thought and was amazed she grew as much as she did (the hole is oblong with the long side being the size of a fifty cent piece). They did not find the second hole so that's good. She is off the pace maker and he is very excited about how the surgery went. She should be in Pediatric ICU in about an hour then we can see her although she will still be sedated.
12:30 pm - We were able to go in and see Leksie in intensive care. She is still on a machine that breathes for her, hopefully she will get off that by the morning. It's not a pretty site but she is doing good. She has two drain tubes coming out of her stomach area, a tube coming out of her right side of her neck, wires coming out of her chest in case she needs the pace maker again, a catheter, and two IV's for pain killers, antibiotics, and fluids.
2:15 pm - Still staying steady, she does flinch every once in awhile and moves. They say it will be late tonight or in the morning before she is alert. Logan's first words were "she is a MESS!!"
3:30 pm - Talked to Dr. Wiggins in Billings, he was happy with her condition but informed us not to get excited, that she was not out of the water yet. The next 48 hrs. are the most important and will tell us a lot.
Night - She wakes up off and on. We're not suppose to excite her to much, but when she wakes up we talk to her and she looks at us and kicks and tries to reach for us but her arms are tied down so she can't. That usually tires her out fast and then she is back to sleep. They are gradually weaning off the oxygen to her and we reached the lowest level for the night at about 12:00 am., they will leave it at that level for the rest of the night. Hopefully they will remove the oxygen tube in the morning around 8:00am.