Let's Do This

Today was good but exhausting for us all.  We woke up early and had appointments in different parts of the Mayo Clinic all day, from 8am till 5:30pm.  Davis was a champ (as always) and did a great job.  He always manages to stay in a good mood and flirt with all the nurses.  We started off the day with an echo (ultrasound of his heart), which they sedated Davis for.  Then we were off to get two chest x-rays, blood drawn, then an EKG.  After that we met with a pediatric cardiologist here and then the famous Dr. Dearani who will be performing the surgery tomorrow.  It was great to finally meet him and hear what he had to say about this cone surgery and Davis specifically.  He seems very optimistic about the surgery and broke it down for us into 4, maybe 5, steps. He will (1) re-shape the affected valve (cone procedure), (2) close a hole between Davis' right and left atria, (3) fold, or plicate, the right ventricle and sew it back together to make smaller, (4) remove some of the tissue making up the right atrium leaving the heart a "normal" size and allowing his lungs to fully expand for the first time. Then the Dr. will see how his heart is doing on it's own (off the machines).  At that point he'll decide if they also need to do the Glenn procedure which basically re-routes all of the blood coming from the upper body to send it straight to the lungs instead of through the heart first.  This would eliminate a lot of blood/pressure from the heart which eases the heart's workload.  The Glen procedure is more common and is done routinely on small children with heart disease.  So that's the plan, we're scheduled to report for surgery at 6am tomorrow. Keep us in your prayers and thoughts tomorrow.