Surgeries near and far

What a week. On Tuesday, Joe and I met with Dr. Elliot to discuss the surgery(s) they perform in Boston. He told us there is a 2 month wait to go there right now. At first we were disappointed by that, but now it seems like it might be a good thing. He also informed us that the cardiologist would be by later that day to talk about Lily needing heart surgery as early as Friday. We were both shocked to hear that. The cardiologist explained that since we have to wait to go to Boston, it would be good to close her VSD now and have that out of the way before her esophageal atresia repair. Her heart will be in better shape going out there. They could do the esophagus surgery without closing her VSD, but overall it will be better if they close it now. So Friday morning at 7:30am she's going back to the OR 😳
Today I met with the cardiac surgeon to discuss the VSD closure. It's an open heart surgery, meaning they have to stop her heart and have her hooked up to a bypass machine to continue circulating her blood throughout her body. They will remove the bands they placed on her pulmonary artery and place a graft (from a cow) over the hole between her ventricles. VSD stands for Ventricular Septal Defect for anyone that needs a reminder. She'll be in the OR for close to 6 hours and she will go to the cardiac ICU for recovery. After a few days of recovery there, she will come back to the NICU until it's time to go to Boston. The surgeon said she could safely have another surgery 2 weeks after this surgery, but ideally he would want them to wait one month. Lily's having a CT of her heart tomorrow to give the surgeons a good view of her heart before the surgery. She has to have anesthesia for the CT scan because they need her to be still and also have a lower heart rate.

So in Boston, they will likely perform a surgery to stretch her esophagus. They use a method that uses traction. It's about a 2 week process of stretching, and then if the esophagus is stretched far enough they connect the two ends. If the stretching doesn't work, then they will take part of her stomach, colon, or small intestine and use that as like a bridge between the two ends of her esophagus. Dr. Elliot seemed confident that the stretching would work for her. If all goes well, she could be out there as little as a month. We're still unsure how our family situation is going to look for that time, but we're hoping that the covid19 craziness will be less crazy mid summer, making travel easier.
Sorry if this doesn't make much sense, I'm rushing to finish so I can get some sleep 😆

Thanks in advance for all your prayers for this big surgery.