Its 8:30 pm on Tuesday, and she did it.  Our strong little princess, never one to back down from a challenge, did not disappoint.  This girl never ceases to amaze us - really.  She inspires me and I learn so much about through her every day in so many ways.

So rewind to yesterday.  Finley was in an AWESOME mood all day.  The nurse practitioner who was admitting Finley kept stopping mid sentence and just laughing because Finley had a lot to say and she wanted to tell her all about it!  She was just rolling around, chatting loudly, etc.  And at one point I left the room to grab lunch and I came up and Finley was checking out all of the wires of her heart leads

yanking on them, grabbing the cord to the blood pressure cuff, putting that in her mouth.  I've definitely noticed over the past two hospitalizations she is WAY more aware of all of the wires and stuff - they seem to be especially tasty.  As an aside - would you just look at her chubby arms???

So yesterday she went down for her central line - they had to do a femoral line because Finley's veinous access is non-existent.  Putting an IV in this child is a process and she has to go to have all of them put in ultrasonically.  Once she had her line, they drew labs and did a chest xray and the rest of the day she just got lots of cuddles.

This morning, I got to the hospital at 5:30 am and Mike dropped Nate off at Grammy's (thank you Gram!). Nate was so funny when I woke him up to get him dressed at 4:30 am - he said, "where are we going?"  I said, "Grammy's".  He said, "Already?  Will she make me french toast?"  You see - Grammy introduced Nate to french toast a couple of weeks ago and he is a BIG FAN!

The transport team came to get Finley at 6:40 am.  Here is a cute little pic of her snuggling with daddy pre-surgery:

When we got down to the OR - we saw and spoke with her anesthesiologist, Dr. Hardy, who is one of the most amazing doctor's we have ever met.  I will never forget Finley's first open heart surgery when she was 13 days old, Dr. Hardy was one of the first docs we saw in the OR and when he came to take her to surgery - he carried her there - in his arms.  And that just meant the world to me.  As it turned out, Dr. Hardy happens to be married to Finley's endocrinologist.  So before surgery - I put in a good word with her to see if she could help ensure we got Dr. Hardy for Finley's surgery today!  Not to mention, I spread the word to a few others too and we were so lucky he could do it!

After a brief pow-wow with the entire surgical team (her ENT Dr. Holinger, and both cardiac surgeons - Dr.s Backer and Russell) - which, by the way, as they are getting ready to take your child back to a surgery like this - its nice to have all of that brain power and talent gathered around your child. As odd as it may sounds, it gave us a smidge of comfort.

Dr. Holinger, her ENT, began by scoping her prior to intubation to check the status of her airway.  He said that the infection (from her prior hospitalization) had cleared but that her airway is still very narrow (only about 25% of normal).  The tube they used for the intubation was the smallest that they could feasibly use - and it was tight.  Essentially what that means is that we could encounter the same difficulties with her breathing when she is extubated in a couple of days.  Especially because her airway became so irritated after the last intubation - which was only for a couple hours - she is going to be intubated for a couple of days.  That being said, the plan is that when she is ready, they are going to take her back to the OR, give her anesthesia, re-scope her, and then take the tube out in a controlled setting.  Prior to that, they are going to pump her full of steroids with the hope that it will help with the inflammation before the tube comes out.

The next part of the procedure involved getting her up on the heart/lung bypass machine.  This takes quite a while so the actual repair portion of the surgery didn't actually begin until 11:30 or so.  First they patched her VSD (with the Gortex patch I told you about in my previous post).  Then they sutured the ASD closed - it was small enough and the tissue around it was loose enough to do this.  Then, because her pulmonary valve was so small, they did end up having to cut it open and put a transannular patch on it.  And while the nurse practitioner had previously told me that the valve could be replaced eventually through a catheterization - she was wrong - it will eventually have to be another open heart surgery.  That could be 10 years from now - or longer.  But it could also be shorter - its hard to say.  Her surgeon told us a story today about a 55 year old woman he operated on last week at Northwestern (her surgical team also operates on adult patients with congenital heart defects) whose patch had lasted ALL THIS TIME!  Bottom line is - she will likely need surgery at some other point - but it should be years away.  We will cross that bridge when we get there.

The nurse practitioner came by around 1:30 pm and told us the surgery was done, she was off the bypass machine and they had closed her up.  They were working on stopping the bleeding, and getting everything regulated, etc.  That process, believe it or not, actually takes a few hours - so we knew we still had a while to wait.  Her surgeon, Dr. Backer, finally came by around 3:30 pm - he told us that everything went great, that is was a very routine surgery for him and that things looked good.  We waited another hour and a half or so and then they finally let us go to her room to see her - it was shortly after 5 at that point.  Fortunately, we knew what to expect.  She looks good considering what she has been through.  She was running a slight fever when we got in her room - this is apparently common post-surgery - and it has continued to slowly subside.  She is completely sedated and will likely be for a couple of days - which, to be honest, is just fine with me.  We at least know she is resting comfortably and healing.

Before I end this, I wanted to just thank everyone so much for all of the kind words, concern, prayers, etc.  It definitely helps us to get through this and to know that we have such wonderful friends and family.  THANK YOU!!!