Ground Control to Major Mom

Time to prepare for Surgery #3.  Early September is the target.  You may be asking yourself, "Why is it time to prepare if it's 7 months away?"  My answer, it's all mental prep.  I can't do it at all at once.  I'm slowly easing into this one.  And yes, it will take me 7 months.  

For the majority of the time since Rosemary was born, it's been a challenge to not think about the big surgeries and procedures.  The ER visits and all of the hospital stays that came up out of the blue were enough to throw a permanent set of blinders on that allowed us not to think, see or worry about anything unless it was the "day of" or right in front of us.

We visited Rosie's Cardiologist today, she gave me the most uplifting report on Rosie's heart. Her function has improved tremendously, which has been significantly down since we left the hospital in September 2007.  After Rosie's Norwood, she went into severe heart failure and we had two back to back admissions that kept us at the hospital for a month and a half.  The good news is that she is growing cognitively, physically and emotionally.  To get a positive report after the year we've had was just wonderful.

The hard part is that we now have to face the realities of preparing for surgery again.  Which, in my opinion, never gets any easier.  After her second surgery, I was so used to being at the hospital that I actually felt safer during the surgery and, of course, after it was over.  I thought I was mentally stronger and more capable of not getting emotional over the thought of surgery #3, the Fontan.  I was wrong.

I almost began crying today when I heard the words from her Cardiologist, "We need to start thinking about her next surgery and I want to cath her sometime in June."  

What?  In that very moment, my trauma blinders were lifted and the reality that we still have one surgery left was, all of the sudden, upon my head and heart again.  Of course I knew the Fontan was necessary.  I guess I just thought that after almost a year of not HAVING to be at the hospital or think about surgeries, that somehow we had escaped the realm of HLHS.  We've been on cruise control for so long, exactly one year to the date on Sunday.  Earlier this week, I was planning our one year post-Glenn party for Rosie, so the reality of hearing this news, which is still positive, just caught me off guard.

I have every reason to believe that she will recover from the Fontan just as well as she did from her first two open heart surgeries.  Just as her little body prepares to go through it again, we, too, must prepare our hearts and minds to be her strength and hope.

FYI: She was AWESOME today for every test she had to go through.  Bloodwork, EKG, SAT's, and an Echo.  Rosie, YOU ROCK SWEETIE!