The surgeon met us in the hallway on the Cardiac floor, and we quickly moved into Amelia's room for a chat. He went through the procedure in some detail, as well as the potential risks of the process. He wanted to be clear that we realized that this type of heart procedure has 200 times greater risk than most other more routine operations.
We were told to expect her chest to be open post-op; usually the heart tends to swell well past the capacity of the chest capacity but that, in time, this would subside and the chest would be closed. We were advised that ultimately the duration of Amelia's hospital stay would be dependent on how well she tolerates the physical trauma of the procedure itself. It's impossible to tell how well things would go because each child is different.
Before leaving, the Surgeon instructed us to wait in Amelia's room for a Team member who would soon arrive and escort us to the OR.
By about 9am, Melissa and I were starting to wonder what was going on. While we had been warned that cancellations were all par for the course, we had assumed that we had passed the 'point of no return'.
We were wrong.
The Surgeon poked his head into the room around 9:30 and informed us that something had come up in ICU and that there was no longer a bed for a post-OP Amelia. We were told to come back tomorrow and that we would try the whole process again.
Melissa and I were pretty frustrated. We waited around at the hospital while the Team replaced Amelia's PICC line. We also wanted to make sure that her feeds were resumed as quickly as possible (obviously they had been suspended in the hours leading up to the surgery deadline).
I mentioned to Melissa that the whole experience sort of had a capital punishment feel to it. You sit and watch the time tick by with this strong sense of fear (and for me- dread) only to have the whole thing cancelled at the very last minute. It's a stay in surgical execution I suppose.
Oh well...let's call this Day Zero, Part II and hope for the best on Tuesday.
No comments:
Post a Comment