Feisty Little Lady

A few photos for your enjoyment.  Warning - open sternum photos!

You can see just how much fluid she was carrying.

Post-op "ants."

Her open sternum.  If you look close enough you can see the shunt holding her sternum open to the right and her heart in the center.

Our champion minutes after surgery.

Mom is back.

Eden is doing better than most expected at this point and we are so proud of her and grateful to our Heavenly Father for this blessing.  She is still in a very critical time in her recovery, but every hour that passes is better for her.  Once again, she is hooked up to millions of bells and whistles and a few new things that she did not have after her first surgery.  She has what is in essence her pace maker.  It is helping her heart to fire in a normal rhythm.  We are told that this can be normal since the heart undergoes so much trauma during surgery.  She also has a nitric oxide machine that helps her body get rid of the carbon dioxide in the blood.  She is still on the ventilator, but they said that her chest x-rays looked better as the night progressed.  She just got another x-ray as I type so we will see the progress.  Her medicine tree is full, but I would have to say not as many medications as last time.  Also, if you remember from the last go around, we did not have much pee pee for a while, well little miss is peeing much better at this stage of the game.  She has two chest tubes and a tube from her belly draining all of the fluid from surgery.  Dr. Pearl left her sternum open again, but this time he has a small shunt holding it open so the gap is about 2 inches and we have full view of her beating heart.  Not long ago, Eden decided that she wanted to wake up fully, not a good idea when your sternum is 2 inches open!  She got quite ornery, feisty and agitated so they had to sedate her very heavily.  They actually had to use a sedation that temporarily paralyzed her until her other meds could kick in.  As you might remember me saying, Eden is a bit of a junky so she needs LOTS of drugs to feel the effects.  Although Chris, her nurse, was not happy to see her awake, she did like the fact that she had enough energy and fight to wake up 12 hours after open heart surgery.

We have come quite a ways from not thinking she would make it out of the OR last night.  We are so happy that she is doing well, but we are also very scared to get too hopeful.  We have had so many "false hope" experiences that it is hard.  We do know however, that the Lord is blessing Eden immensely and He is answering many of the prayers so many of us have offered.  We still do not know which  way this will go, but we know we are watched over and this offers us much peace and comfort.  We are so proud of you Eden.