Breathing a Little Easier

Greetings to All

This has been a journey as many of you know, is one that has had its ups and downs,
sometimes it feels like we are running down hill, more that up, but God is good and has been so faithful to our little family that we will continue to give Him thanks and praise for his faithfulness. I wanted to give you all a little update on my day today. I had found this organization called, "It's My Heart" about a month back. It is a non-profit organization that is out there to support children, adults, and families who are living with Congenital Heart Defects. They have a great website if you would like to check it out it is www.itsmyheart.org they also have a forum where people can post messages and get feed back from survivors and families. As many of you know my luck on the internet has not been very fruitful in terms of positive feed back or stories, well a guy named Jeff responded to my post concerning any advice or good things to know about going into surgery at Texas Children's hospital. Jeff has a 14 month old son who has had two open heart surgeries at Texas Childrens, so Jeff has had his fair share of experiences at Texas Children's. Our children have different heart defects, but we will share similar expereinces and emotions in the fact that we will watch our children being rolled off into an operation room and having to trust them to someone else care. Jeff sent me a message explaining his situation and said to give him a call that it would be easier to explain over the phone. WOW, what a blessing this guy was, is and probably will continue be to our little family. Just very down to earth, very clear, and very very informative, not to mention very positive! God plucked him right out of the sky for this little cajun boy! He walked me through the process step by step and gave me some really good, "what to expects." He also told me that he had heard Dr. Salazar, who is the surgeon who will be operating on Cate, speak at an "It's My Heart" monthly meeting and he said that he was awesome. Extremely intelligent and very empathetic. I thank God today for Jeff and his family!
I had called this morning to find out what EXACTLY they were doing in the surgery, because Ali and I still didn't totally understand, as terrible as that sounds, its simply the truth. We have just kinda put our faces to the wind lately and tried to just keep our family above water, but Ali and I were talking last night and we both were like, I don't really know what they are going to do, I mean, I know they are going to "repair" her heart, but what does that mean? So this morning I called our nurse Laura and she explained as much as she could to me, and said that she would have Dr. Salazar contact me later in the week, well, he called me within 2 hours of Laura and I talking. He has a WONDERFUL bedside manner and was very clear and very positive on Cate's condition and surgery. Dr. Salazar said that on a scale of one to ten, ten being the most severe, Cate is a three or four, he said, "Now, this is a serious surgery, its still open heart surgery, but we have alot experience with this and our success rate is one of the top in the country. He said that the surgery should take around 4 hours, half an hour of prep, three hours of surgery, and half an hour tear down. He said that he is very hopeful that this is the only surgery Cate will ever have to have. Now, there is no garuntee to that but he seems pretty confident in his work and the success he has seen with this operation. He also said that Cate might only be in ICU for one or two nights, then on the cardio floor for a three or four days and then she would be discharged. He said that he would want us to stick around for three or four days and then we go home. He said, "Look, you know if your baby is sick, if Cate is not acting right, just call me and if you need will come back here and see me. It was a wonderful conversation and I feel just a little more at peace about trusting this total stranger with the precious gift of our daughter.
Jeff, the dad I spoke to this morning, told me about a website that he found very helpful and after looking at it I had a MUCH better understanding of what Dr. Salazar is going to do on Cate's heart. I wanted to share it with you all
so that you too could have a better understanding of Tetralogy and the surgical repair they are going to do. Above the diagram of the heart their are the words Flash Movie, if you click that you can actually see a a diagram of a normal
heart and a diagram of a Tetralogy heart right next to each other. There is an arrow button at the bottom that points to the right, this will move you through a series of slides that shows the repair that the surgery will do.

http://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/health/heart-encyclopedia/anomalies/tof.htm

It was wonderful to have two very positive experiences today. Are we still nervous, YES, are their days that I want to shake my finger at God and give him a piece of my mind YES, and if I could spare a piece I might, but I can't I need every little bit of it I have right now, so I don't. But today God, you gave this little family another break, at least for today, and you know what, I'll take it! Thank you for your faithfulness to our family and for knowing what we need to hear and hand picking the people to deliever it. We praise and thank you again for your faithfulness. I surrender my family to you and we, Ali, Ella, Dude and I, lift our daughter and sister Cate to you in sweet surrender! Amen