Huge Day Today

We got to the hospital this morning at 8:00 a.m. We had intended to stay until about 11:00 because Rich had a meeting at noon. We thought we'd go to the hospital for a few hours, head home at lunch time and come back down later to say goodnight. At least that was the plan we had thought we were going to stick to, but everything changed once we spoke with Zoe's doctors. Turns out that some time between last night and this morning, they had changed their mind about Zoe's surgery. Instead of waiting until next week, they decided they wanted to do the surgery sooner--as in tomorrow sooner. The docs wanted to run one more echocardiogram to check Zoe's pulmonary hypertension, but if all went well they intended to transport Zoe to the children's hospital today and operate in the morning.

While the children's hospital is connected to the one in which I gave birth, transporting babies in Zoe's condition is no small thing. She needs to stay on the ventilator, keep all her meds, oxygen, and nitrous oxide in tact, and stay stable. It is not abnormal for babies to have some kind of setback after transport. In fact, we know just how difficult transport can be because when Zoe was born, they decided not to transport her as they had intended to do because she was so fragile they thought she might "crash" along on the way.

So . . . we waited anxiously for her echocardiogram to come back. If her pulmonary hypertension had improved it was all a go. We were nervous for so many reasons, not the least of which was that doing the surgery over the weekend meant using a different pediatric surgeon, one we had not ever met. We tried very hard to track this new doctor down throughout the day, but we didn't have any luck. Ultimately, we decided that we just needed to suck it up, trust everyone's word when they told us that he is excellent, and realize that we weren't going to meet him until we got closer to the surgery.

At about noon we got the results of the echo back--all was good and transport was a definite. They told us to be ready at 3. What they didn't tell us is that Lifeflight (the team that responds to major emergencies) was going to do the transport. They also didn't tell us how gigantic the transport machine is. So you can imagine our surprise (and my tears) when this machine rolled into Zoe's room:

They had to unhook Zoe from all her connections and rehook her on this new isolette,

but the team was completely on top of it and stayed very focused on the task at hand. After connecting her to her new ventilator, they wheeled her through the hospital. I cannot tell you how much people stare when they see this machine being wheeled through the hallway:

After about a five minute transport, they finally got Zoe to her new home in the children's hospital. Then they reversed the whole process--unhooking her from everything so they can reattach her to her new machines:

While mom and dad settled in and relaxed, and dad made sure all the nurses were on task

Zoe settled into her new home:

The docs said that her numbers appeared to stay stable and she did a great job. Mom and dad were VERY relieved that she handled everything so well. Meanwhile, when we told Sadie that Zoe was going to have a big day and get transported over to the hospital right next door, she said she was really going to miss her, but wished her sister well and told her she couldn't wait to see her soon!

As far as the new pediatric surgeon goes, we finally got to meet him after Zoe had settled in. He seems very smart and capable and we feel completely comfortable about him. Of course, it doesn't hurt that he went to Hopkins for undergrad and med school and he's been to the Charles Village Pub, The Green Turtle and Eddies Supermarket, but we can't get past the fact that he grew up in Pittsburgh and he's, unfortunately, a Steelers fan.

All kidding aside, we feel very confident with Zoe's life in his hands tomorrow. While the surgery itself is not all that complicated, it involves moving the liver from the chest down to the abdomen and anytime anyone touches a premature baby's liver, there as a risk of bleeding that could potentially become catastrophic. So, please hold Zoe in your thoughts and prayers tomorrow morning, and hope that her surgery is smooth sailing.

It's late and we are very tired, so we are going to try and rest up for the big day tomorrow. THANK YOU so much to our friends Katherine, Roger, Karena and Adam who dropped dinners off at our house tonight. They could not have come at a better time! And thank you Meg for always coming by the hospital and visiting with us. It always adds a little boost to our day. Before we go though, we want to give a shout out to our friend Emily who was admitted to the hospital today for complications from her heart transplant. Em--we will come see you this weekend and we absolutely know that things will improve for you very, very soon!