Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Zipper Club Anniversary

Anniversary

I Heart You

Today, Lucy celebrates her 1 year open heart surgery anniversary. What an amazing and challenging year it has been for all of us. We have been through so much and had many ups and downs, but I think we have learned a lot and are much stronger from the experience. At the time, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. A 46 day ICU visit.

Lucy went into surgery that morning at 6AM, and after a grueling 10+ hour surgery, we were told that the repairs looked good and they were going to try to start her heart again. The doctors initially had an extremely difficult time getting Lucy off of the heart-lung bypass machine. Third time was finally a charm, but by that time Sarah and I both needed our own machines to keep our hearts beating. A huge weight was finally lifted off of our chests nearly 10 hours later.

At around 6PM, we were reunited with Lucy for the first time and little did we know that our prison-like Pediatric Intensive Care Unit room would become home for many weeks to come.

After reading back what we wrote during that time and seeing now just really how sick she was, it's a miracle that she survived surgery. It's something now that we, the doctors and even her heart surgeon can joke about. We all love you Lucy! Happy Anniversary!

(Lucy’s heart surgery documented on Flickr)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Happy Heart Day, Lucy! {We make our Lucy a cake on her heart day. Hope your mommy and daddy made you one, too! ha ha!}

Adrienne said...

Happy Heart Day Lucy!! We had cake for Bennett as well:) Tell your mommy and daddy to get on it, if they haven't already:)

Janet Isserlis said...

yes!

kanselm said...

Happy Heart Day Lucy! It is nice to share this special day with you. We can hardly believe it was a year ago we first met. Kyle is going to have his first heart shaped sugar cookie today to celebrate his surgery. We love your blog and check it every day. Keep up the good work!

Anne and Whitney: Up, Down and All Around said...

Happy Heart Day, Lucy!!! We went to Scotty's Brewpub for Whitney's heart day :) (a tall beer was definitely in order to toast the heart day!)

Here's to many more happy heart days!!!

Alaina and Kyle said...

Happy Heart Anniversay Lucy!! You have come such a long ways!!

Tina said...

Happy Belated Heart Day Lucy! My son Cameron shares your heart day too.

Becca said...

Happy heart day, Lucy! What a beautiful little girl!!! (just found your blog)

We have a 4th heart day coming up next month, too. :-)