We're through surgery!

Haley is through surgery and we are all together now in the Cardiac ICU (CICU)! It was a challenging catheterization and lasted about 5 hours, but they accomplished everything they set out to do and she is extubated, breathing room air, and cuddled in Daddy's arms as I type.

They had quite a bit of trouble getting vascular access as they normally go through the right femoral vein but that was scarred down and completely gone after the last catheterization (thus the horrible purple leg at that time). The left femoral vein was very small and they actually had to go through the femoral artery and do an angiogram to find it and place a canula. Then working from the left side is tricky because you have to make more twists and turns to get to the heart. They did end up having to re-expand the stent in her PDA as that had significant endothelialization leading to stenosis. Then they couldn't pull a balloon through her ASD to re-enlarge it because the wall had thickened. So instead they had to put a balloon with blades on it into the hole and inflate it to cut the wall. Then they inserted sequentially larger balloons and inflated them to rip the cut wall open farther. Finally they pulled a balloon through as they had tried to do originally. The doctor did say that since she's showed such a propensity to heal herself and close these holes we're trying to keep open, that it is likely they will try to constrict down again. But hopefully this procedure will buy us some time so that when they are getting too small the next time that we will just be able to do the Stage 2 procedure.

If you look closely in today's picture you can see that her little feet and legs are mostly the right color! One is a little pale and one is a little purple, but they are much more normal than her leg was last time, and they both have good pulses and capillary refills! They have her on heparin - a blood to help her keep from forming clots - so hopefully they will get back to totally normal quickly.

She's a little pale herself post-op, and she did have a packed red blood cell transfusion during the procedure. But she already seems to have a little more color than she did right away, and I think I would be pale after that too. She's also having little periods where she's very upset, about ever 30 minutes or so, probably just a combination of stress, sleep deprivation, being hungry, etc. We're just holding her and rocking her, and when she gets upset we stand up and bounce her and that really helps. She's doing a magic color changing trick right now when she gets mad - her face turns red and it gets a little blue around her lips - but hopefully that will resolve when she calms down, gets back to her normal self, and doesn't get so worked up.

We're just so relieved she's through surgery and back in our arms. Now we're praying for a speedy recovery and that we get to have our little smiling, chuckling, batting, grasping, cooing Haley-bug back ASAP!