Surgery #1

On November 9, 2010 little Destiny who was only just over a week old headed off to the operating room for her Norwood Proceedure, we were told that the operating room was scheduled for 7 hours and also that no news was good news. We were asked that one of us stay in the surgical waiting room at all times incase there was an emergency they needed to inform us of. 

Before surgery November 9, 2010.

So Eric quickly headed down to Tim Hortons to get us tea and coffee while I settled into the waiting room to do what you do in a waiting room..wait. Eric wandered around, and paced like any nervous dad would do, and I started reading a book. Other parents came and went, we chatted with a few, we chatted with each other, and we cried and prayed a lot. Eventually Eric went to get some lunch and convinced me to eat. Then we waited some more. Finally 3pm arrived, 7 hours after they had taken our baby into the operating room and we started getting anxious for news. After another 2 1/2 hours (5:30pm, 9 1/2 hours after they took her) one of the doctors that had been in the OR came to talk to us. He informed us that they had run into some problems they weren't expecting during her surgery, but they had dealt with them and the surgery was finally finished, however they were having problems getting the bleeding to stop. With that we were sent back to the waiting room and the doctor headed back to the OR.

We waited, and waited. Talked to family, cried more, prayed more, and cried even more. Around 8pm Eric convinced me yet again to eat something, and since the waiting room was mostly empty by this time I tried to nap on the horribly uncomfortable couch. After no luck with the nap, I updated  my facebook to let everyone know we were still waiting, a good friend of mine saw this status update and was relatively close to the hospital and decided to come visit with us for a bit. So we chatted and caught up for a few hours while we waited. Around 10:30pm my friend left and they came to tell us they had finally stopped the bleeding and she was out of the OR, but needed about an hour to get her back to her room and hooked up to all the machines and such that she would now be dependant on for a while.

Now being able to rest Eric found me a few blankets and I curled up on the couch for a nap, about an hour and a half later, he woke me up to tell me that we could FINALLY go see our baby girl. It was without a doubt the longest day of both of our lives, and nothing could have prepared us for what we were about to see.



November 12, 2010-3 days post-op. 

We thought our little girl had been through the worst, we would quickly find out that was not to be true.