Another step forward

December 3 Finally I got this stupid tube out of my mouth. Now I am sitting in a nicely humidified hood to help with my healing. Mom and dad seem pretty happy. Maybe they can hold me soon. I miss that. I feel I have been a brave little champion. Thanks to all my friends for all the support. I heard my big sister got a little gift as well! I am not sure about that But I guess I will let it go. I will post some recent pictures tonight. Man I am cute!

A little photo montage to date.

Well this was my first full day at Sick Kids back on November 23rd.  As you can see there are lots of tubes and I have a nasty tube down my throat.  Mostly it annoys me, but they keep saying it helps me breathe....what do they know???  You may also notice that there are two IVs in my head.  I thought these guys were professionals!!!

A few days later they FINALLY took the tubes out of my head and my throat and I got to hang out with mom.  They made her hold onto humidified air to sooth my throat after they pulled out the tubes from my throat.  AGAIN, I thought they were professionals.  DID YOU SEE MY HAIR??? I have a good mind to call my lawyer.  Never let a man near a girls head with clippers!!!

We dad caught me off guard with this one and promised to delete it.  I heard him whispering something about weddings and embarrassment.

Being in moms arms is the most relaxing thing.  My big sister Reese said soothers are awesome so I am giving them a shot.   This was just before the surgeon dude said it was time to fix my ticker. 

Well, it was done.  My glowworm and I are just hanging out now and getting better.  You may notice a few things in this wicked post op photo.   First that bandage on my chest....yup my heart is under it...LITERALLY.  Lift it up, I DARE you.....And look at my right hand, FIGHT THE POWER!!!!

December 1, Mom and dad got here a little late today.  Traffic sucked. I peed ALOT and the swelling was down so guess what...NO MORE BANDAGE.  My little ticker is back behind my ribs.  I have 5, count them 5 computers tracking stuff.  I have a few less holes and tubes today.  If you look close enough you will notice there are still quite a few things to be removed.  Dad says I look cute, but I don't know if boys will really dig it all.  Time will tell.  I am a little tired, so I am going to get some rest and maybe my next blog I will have less things coming out of me.

Good morning everyone! Well it is a slow road, but big news! My chest is closed!!! Now when do I get to see my parents?

So on Monday I celebrated my two week birthday, and let me tell you, it was legend-ary. I had open heart surgery! Not too many people get to say that! You might be asking why is a two week old having surgery...
Maybe I need to back up a bit....and go back to the beginning.

Nov 14, 2011: Hello world! I arrived a BIG bundle of joy, weighing in at 9lb 4ozs. Everything looked hunky dory. My first week went by with normal baby stuff, eating, pooing etc.

But then things got complicated, I am going to go all medical here so try to follow along:
No one knew it yet but I had been born with some irregularities in my heart. There was a piece missing from my arterial arch, and a hole between my two ventricular cavities. The pictures below should help you out.

A quick hearts 101 lesson. Your body uses up the oxygen in the blood and then returns it to your heart. It then goes to your lungs via the pulmonary artery. It comes back from the lungs all full of oxygen ready to be used by the body. The oxygen rich blood then heads out to the body through the aorta. The aorta has a bunch of branches that feed different parts of the body.

At point 1 in the picture the two pieces of aorta should be joined together.(like first picture above) But just like in the second picture I had a gap. Because of the gap the lower part of my body wasnt getting enough oxygen rich blood.

I also had the hole at number 3. This is the really cool part...that hole, mixed oxygen rich blood (the red side in the picture) with the oxygen poor blood (blue side) to make a mix with enough oxygen good enough to keep me going. This mixed blood reached the lower half of my body through the disconnected piece of my aorta that was being fed by the ductus arteriosus.

The ductus arteriosus is also really interesting! When I was inside mom, all the blood arriving at my heart already had oxygen (thanks mom!), so the ductus arteriosus bypassed  some of the blood around my lungs. All babies have this path way and it normally closes in about a week. Which is when we all noticed something was wrong.

Sometimes people know about these problems before we babies are born, but I got to be what Dad calls the Shock and Awe case. (Dad's are funny). I had a bit of crash, but those folks at Sick Kids nursed me back to stable condition in a few days.

Once I was stable it was time for my surgery. It was about 6hours long, and pretty complicated. There were some super duper doctors with some super duper fine motor skills let me tell you. They connected  my aortic arch back into one piece, closed the hole between the ventricular cavities and closed up the duct arteriosus, since I didnt need those cheater pathways once my aorta was all fixed up.

It is still a long road to normal babyhood, and I will be hanging out at Sick Kids for a while longer, but I will keep blogging to let everyone know how I am doing.

Hi Folks,
Thanks for all the love and attention over the last week and a bit. Mom and Dad have really appreciated the support. I thought I would start this blog to keep everyone updated on how I am doing.