What day is this, anyway?

Well, late this afternoon Sophie got released from the NICU and now has her own private room upstairs. Yay on 2 counts: 1 because she is off all the IVs and pacemaker and 2 because it is much more comfortable, quiet, and private (including private bath) in there.

They are still giving her blood pressure medication, but it's oral now and not the iv drip. I never thought about it, but before the surgery her heart was used to pumping extra hard to achieve normal circulation and after it is suddenly much more efficient, but still beating just as hard, which leads to increased blood pressure. Hence the meds for a couple weeks until her heart adjusts. I listened to it with a stethoscope on Friday during the pre-op and it sounded much different than mine. Instead of the "lub-dub" it was a loud whooshing "wow wow" sound, kinda like an ultrasound, if you've ever heard one. And now it sounds perfectly normal the nurses tell me. Just amazing.

We did talk to the surgeon yesterday morning and he told us that things went as expected. He also removed a little bit of extra tissue that was causing the bloodflow to be slightly turbulent just before it exits the valve. He said the theory is that this "swirling" leaves little deposits over time that build up. He removed them and cleaned up the "geometry" to make it more laminar. But he thinks everything went well and there shouldn't be recurrence of any of these issues. So we are thrilled.

I stayed with Sophie last night and I don't think anyone in the ICU got much sleep. Between her waking up, the monitor alarms going off, and her neighbor waking up, it's tough to get any sleep. Then when I finally got dozed off at 7:30am and was getting pretty decent rest, they woke me up at 9 to kick me out of the ICU so they could close it and do a procedure on a patient. I got a few naps during the day, but am pretty beat. Sophie is looking better today, but was still needing a lot of medications for the discomfort. The good news is that Stephanie and I got to hold her this afternoon after they took all the IVs out, so that was nice. That really comforted her and she took some pretty good naps then. Hopefully she'll need less medications tonight and tomorrow as she heals up. Stephanie is up there tonight staying with her, so I hope things go well.