Tomorrow...

Its the day we have waited for since March 2009 when we sent LOI to China. We knew that she was going to need major open heart surgery. I am so thankful that we had 6 months to bond and attach before surgery! I think it will be much better for Laila now that she is more comfortable with us!

Today was a very long day of getting prepared and checked out for tomorrow! Laila had to get xrays, EKG, flu virus test, urinalysis, and bloodwork. Oh the bloodwork!!! She had to have it redone!! One of the vials of blood clotted before they could test it. It was so sad because we had promised her only one needle today. She was ticked for awhile after that!!! The child life specialist came by to talk to her and she really did a wonderful job explaining everything to Laila. The FUNNIEST thing was before she left she asked Laila "What did she want to do after her surgery?? What did she want the most to be able to do??". Well Laila sat there for a very long awkward silence and she blurted out finally, "I want a REALLY REAL Phone!!!" Yes, that is what she wants. The child life specialist just laughed and we all needed a good laugh!! There was a doll that they used to demonstrate the procedures on and Laila named it "Joy". Joy is her little best friend from China that we pray will be adopted soon by a family from Louisiana.

Overall Laila is really ready for this. It makes it so much easier on us. She is a trooper through everything.

The surgery tomorrow should be around 8 hours. Laila has Complete Atrioventricular Canal Defect and a Single Ventricle. So the first part of the surgery is correcting the AV Canal Defect. Then the surgeon is going to perform a Fenestrated Fontan procedure. This is hopefully going to be done outside of her heart, it is called extracardiac when it is done this way. Basically the Inferior Vena Cava will be seperated from the heart and attached directly to the Pulmonary Ateries. This will take the workload off her single ventricle. The only work the single ventricle will be doing is sending oxygenated blood into the body. Now she has blue blood mixing and it makes her Oxygen saturations very low. (Usually mid 70s) After this procedure the saturations should be in the lower 90s. They are going to leave a tiny hole in the heart (fenestration) which will act as a pop-off valve to help. Later if she can tolerate it they will close this whole in the cath lab. (Maybe in a year or so) Then her sats would be upper 90s. But now the lower 90s will be LIFE changing for her!!!!

Overall we are trusting that God has his hand on Laila and things are going to go well.