5 years post Norwood

It was 5 years ago today that we sent our two week old baby girl into her second open heart surgery. The same surgery that they were unable to do the week before that ended up with an emergent decision by her surgeon that had saved her life. The week between her first week surgery and this one we went through the process of getting her listed for transplant. It was a long scary process and we were told she would be listed 1A. Meaning first on the list to receive a heart if one came available. She was that sick, that fragile. It was so hard. But we, along with our army of prayer warriors railed together to storm the gates of heaven with our pleas for God to save her life and heal her sick lungs to support her half of a heart. Because in the words of her doctors, her lungs are too damaged to support a broken heart. But in that week, our mighty God used the first surgery to send the perfect amount of blood too her lungs and they slowly day by day they began to grow stronger. So at two weeks old her surgeon decided that her lungs were ready to try the first surgery again. She went in and the many hours went by, and when she came out she was swollen from being on the bypass machine, she was still on the ventilator, and her chest was still open covered only by a translucent amber colored type of plastic.  We could see her heart beating inside and it made me physically ill. But she was alive! About 12 hours into recovery things went downhill fast. We were losing her, or so we thought. The room was full of doctors and nurses all rushing around, the life support machine was brought in and the surgeon had been called to come back to the hospital to hook it up... But we didn't have time to wait. The doctors gave her a dose of medication that they call "poison" it's an awful medication, but sometimes it can save a life. It was our only option. They gave her dose after dose and it wasn't working. They had maxed out on the allotted amount and the doctor called someone on the phone and I heard them arguing over what to do, he wanted to give her one more dose, but the lady on the other side of the phone basically told him it was a death sentence. He explained that we were losing her and the surgeon 

hadn't arrived yet. They both knew the risk, but went ahead and decided to go through with one more dose. The doctor explained to us the place we were in and we all agreed to give it one more try. Then her doctor came over and prayed with us. That's when it happened. Instead of her death her heart started to stabilize! God had heard our pleas and He had mercy. Today we celebrate His goodness!!!