On our way to the hospital!!!

Today was the big day and oh what a ride it has been. It is about 1:00am and we just barely walked in the door. The procedure ended up taking about 7 hours total. It's been a long day. We almost stayed up at the hospital tonight but they gave away their last room to parents that live further away from the hospital than we do.

The surgery on the heart is complete. The doctors declared it a success and they were even able to save her pulmonary value and not have to replace it during this same procedure. There were some complications after the they where done fixing the heart and had taken Kate off the by-pass machine. They noticed a small leak in her Aortic Artery. As they were patching up that hole, Kate's heart stopped beating. Not a good scenario, but they were prepared for this. During the the 5 minutes it took to get her back on the by-pass machine they were performing CPR to maintain good blood flow to the brain and were monitoring her oxygen levels. Of course this isn't exactly what we wanted to hear and made it very stressful for us. The doctors let her heart rest for about an hour while Kate stayed on the by-pass machine and they tried again. They were able to re-start Kate's heart and began the process of taking her off the machine. This time it was a success and Kate's little heart kept going strong. She is a little fighter. They decided not to close her up all the way just yet to relieve pressure on her lungs and her chest. She has a bandage across her entire chest....looks like a corset. She has several tubes draining fluid build-up and three or four IV's for different medicine that they give her to help the function of the heart after the huge stress it was under for the surgery.

We are overwhelmed by the skill and ability of the surgeons and medical staff at Primary Children's and what they are able to do for our little Kate. We can't express enough gratitude to them and all of our family and friends who have been praying and showing support for our little family. Kate is doing as well as could be expected and we know that it is through all of your prayers that she has been able to get to this point. We love everyone that has been involved with helping us through this trying time and hope to see you all as soon as possible. We will try and keep this updated as much as possible in the next couple of weeks with updates and pictures. Trust us, you don't really want to see the post-op pictures we have but this one is a pre-op picture, just before the big event.