Heart-Ache Part III

On Tuesday morning, I gave Eva one last breast feed just before 6:30am as that was the last time she was allowed to be fed before her sedation.  We packed up all our bags & cooler of food from Abbotsford and headed into Vancouver, this time a little later in the morning.  We dropped off Akeyla at Fred & Regina's again and headed to the hospital for about 10:30.

We went to the Surgical Day Care Unit to prepare for Eva's sedation for her CT Scan, Echo and blood work.  We were placed in a little room and given a tiny hospital gown to put Eva in.  Here they put some numbing cream on the tops of her hands to prepare for IV sites, she got a hospital bracelet, and since she had been weighed and measured the day before, she didn't have to go through that again.  We were given a little tour of where we were supposed to wait to speak to the anesthetist and then where we were allowed to wait while these procedures would be happening.

I knew that my good friend Charlotte worked in Radiology at Children's, so I had called her in advance to see if she would be working that day.  She was!  I was so looking forward to seeing her familiar, friendly face.  And of course giving her a big hug.  She had told me that she was going to be our nurse, so in spite of being nervous about putting Eva under, I was excited to see Charlotte.

We had barely sat down in the first waiting area when the anesthetist came in to talk to us.  Again, we got the same questions about how the coarct was discovered in Eva and the same basic questions everyone seemed to ask.  The anesthetist explained what he would be doing but I honestly don't remember what he said.  We were told that everything would only take about 45 minutes and we were left there to wait again.  Only a few minutes later, we were called to come to the radiology department.

This is where we met Charlotte, who took Eva's file and brought us to a little waiting room.  She did her job wonderfully and was very professional, but still a friend. :)  I made a comment about how fast everything was going and Charlotte said that they were actually ahead of schedule.  This isn't always the case - sometimes they are running up to a couple hours behind!  I attribute this to the power of prayer!  She answered a few questions and then it was time to take her in.  I was happy that Charlotte was the one taking Eva to the other room, but still sad to leave her!

Russ & I got a little bite to eat and then went to the waiting room.  We passed the time by playing on the ipad and watching some Olympics that they had on the TV.  45 minutes came and went but no word about Eva.  It was probably an hour and 15 minutes when Russ finally went to go ask a nurse if they had heard anything about Eva, and they hadn't so we just kept on waiting.  But by this point, we were starting to get quite anxious.  The ipad and TV kinda stopped being an adequate distraction.

Finally about an hour and a half later, Charlotte came back in to tell us that Eva was now in the recovery room.  She said that it had taken the anesthetist about 45 minutes just to get an IV in!  Of course Eva was gassed as they were trying this, but her veins were so hard to see through her skin so they were going off of their knowledge of where a vein should be.  In the end, they ended up using an ultra sound to see the vein in her foot and were looking at the computer screen as they were inserting the needle.  Crazy!  Because it was so hard to get an IV in, they decided to keep the IV in for the next day so they wouldn't have to go through all that again.  The actual scan, echo & blood work went well.

When we saw her in recovery, she was so dozy and downright miserable.  If you've ever seen your child come out of a sedation, you'll know that it's pretty sad to see!  The volunteers at the hospital gave her a very pretty little quilt and a little hand-knitted stuffie.  We tried to distract Eva with these and other toys they had in there, but she was totally uninterested in all that stuff.  I climbed onto the bed with her and tried nursing her.  It worked to settle her a bit, but she was obviously out of sorts and did not feel like herself.

Russ' parents arrived at the hospital from the Island at this time, so they came and saw her in recovery and shortly after that, we were wheeled back to the Surgical Day Care unit.  We were probably only there for about a half hour or so before Eva was given the green light to go.  I put her clothes back on and we made our way back to the Heart Centre to talk to Connie again and find out the results of the CT Scan from the surgeon.

When we got there, we learned that the surgeon was actually in another surgery and so we were not able to see him right away.  We were told to come back in about an hour or so.  We decided to go to the cafeteria for some lunch.  Eva was so beside herself by this time and actually fell asleep in my arms.  Thankfully.  She's not very light anymore, but honestly, my arms were the only place I really wanted her to be.  We got some lunch with Russ' parents and then headed back up to the Heart Centre for about 3pm.

Dr. Ghandi came in shortly thereafter and explained to us that the coarct was definitely present and instead of being kind of an hourglass shape, it looked more like a cinched spot, if that makes any sense.


He showed us the picture of it from the scan and yeah - it was very clear that this would have been a significant restriction to her blood flow.  He was going to cut this coarct out and sew the two good ends of the aorta back together.

He also explained that the hole in her heart, or the PDA (Patent Ductus Arteriosus) would be cut out along with the coarct with a few stitches to close the spot where the PDA went into the other artery.  In fact, this PDA was actually helping the heart because there was extra blood going through the PDA to the rest of the body.

Here's an example of what Eva's heart looked something like.  The number 4 is showing what a coarct looks like and I drew an arrow to show the PDA.  (for the purpose of this post, you can ignore numbers 1-3 - those are not relevant for Eva's situation.)

The doctor of course explained the risks of the surgery to us and the success that they have had with this surgery.  He actually said that Eva being 9 months old was at the older end of the spectrum to be having this surgery which was quite surprising to us.  The older a child (or teenager) is, the higher the risks become.

Anyway, he seemed like a confident, knowledgeable surgeon.  He came with many raving reviews from all of the staff that knew him.

We also spoke to the anesthetist who would be sedating Eva the next day and then basically just summed everything up with Connie.

Clearly, this is not the information that we were hoping and praying for.  God decided not to heal her heart without surgery.  After all the stress of the past two days, which was actually all the easy stuff, I was hoping and praying more than ever that Eva would be able to avoid surgery.  The thought of going into surgery just seemed so..... HARD.  But at the same time, there was a feeling of relief that we finally knew what tomorrow would bring.  It would be hard, but many other people have been through this - and worse - and have made it through.  And if there was any place to be in this situation, BC Children's was it.  We were in good hands.  Now our faith changed to believing that this is what the Lord's will was and we were going to live in that.  And trust that our Good Father still knew EXACTLY what was going on and that he would carry us through every step.

The results from that nose bacteria wasn't back yet, so we picked up the antibacterial cream for Eva's nose and then headed back to Fred & Regina's to pick up Akeyla.  Russ' parents met us there and then we drove to the Sandmann where we would spend the next several nights.  The Variety Club paid for our accommodation while Eva was in the hospital and the folks at the hotel graciously upgraded our room to one with a kitchenette, so that we could prepare and eat at the hotel instead of eating every meal out.  We got all our stuff in the room and then headed downstairs to have dinner at Moxie's.  Russ' parents joined us, but it's not like it was a relaxing, light-hearted meal or anything.  Our hearts were burdened and our minds were on little Eva.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel room to try to prepare Eva for the next day, get the girls tucked into bed and get some shut-eye ourselves.  Tomorrow was going to be a loooonnnnnggggg day......