A Post From Dustin

This was my sweet baby girl this morning.

This was her this afternoon.

This is her this evening.

As you can see she has made a great deal of progress in what has really been twelve hours.  She is now off the ventilator, has had two of her large IV tubes removed, is on about half the medications and is eating better now than she did before she had surgery.  She eats one ounce every three hours.

This morning her face was extremely swollen and she was still heavily sedated.  You can't help but feel overwhelmed by the road ahead, but as the day progressed tubes, wires, medication pumps and IVs began to disappear, and my little girl started looking more like she did just a couple of days ago.  However, she is better than she was a couple of days ago.  She can eat on her own and she breathes some much better despite have had open heart surgery just a day ago.

The doctors are very happy with her recovery and how her heart is functioning.  The next few days we will learn more about just how successful the surgery was.  There could be leakage around the patches and other parts that were cut open to perform the surgery.  An echo cardiogram will be done in the next couple of days to make sure that there is not any or at least very little leakage.  Also she is on a temporary pacemaker at the moment and will be until the swelling in the heart goes down... hopefully. 

In a surgery like Harper's there is a chance that the conduction path can be damaged, which is part of the system that tells your heart how to beat in the proper sequence. If the conduction path has been damaged, Harper will need to have a permanent pacemaker for the rest of her life.  Of course this is something that we don't want for Harper, but if this is something we have to deal with it is much better than having a one chamber heart or having to go through multiple surgeries to get less than what we have now.  If a pacemaker is what the good Lord has given us than we will be happy with that because it could be so much worse.  The pacemaker will be inside Harper and will have to be changed out very five years or so.  She will be able to live a normal life, except she will not be able play full contact sports.  So I guess my dreams of my daughter being the first girl to make the All-State team in football have been crushed.  Oh well, you can't have everything.

We are definitely on the upward swing and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.   After the surgery yesterday the surgeon pulled Amy and I aside along with our parents to tell us how the surgery went.  As he was telling us of all the difficulties they had and just how defected Harper's heart was it felt like a tidal wave hit me.  I understood everything he said but it was just overwhelming.  I found my self struggling to keep my self together.  It was strange, he assured us that the surgery was successful but I could help from feeling helpless.  I guess the months of waiting, preparing, anticipating, and dreading this very moment were all falling down around my weary soul.  As we came back into the waiting room which was filled with our family and friends, I tried to explain to everyone what the doctor just told us.  I got a few words out and broke down.  Thankfully Eddie was there to help explain to everyone what was said.  Why I'm telling all this I'm not sure, but maybe to say that you don't know how much stress you are under until your are not under anymore and that I think I understand Rom 8:26 a little bit better.

Thank you all for all that you done for us.  I want to thank everyone who sat with us during Harper's surgery and all those who have stopped by to visit.  Our prayers have been and still are being answered because our Father is merciful and full of compassion.  Praise Him!