Hey everyone, We've made it through day 2 (surgery day was day 0). Today was much of the same, monitoring and tweaking Ruby's meds to make sure her blood pressure and heart activity is where they want it. They have been very gradually reducing the pressure on the heart pump to let her heart do more work and to increase the pressure in the right side (that's the thick side, more pressure will stretch it out a bit). She has been handling it well. Tomorrow is going to be a similar day, but on Saturday morning they are planning to challenge her heart. What that means is turning off the heart pump and letting her heart do the pumping. One reason they need to do this (other than the obvious of getting her heart working again) is to test the second repair. During the surgery the surgeon repaired the holes and repaired a valve in the right side. The valve was very abnormal and had 4 or 5 defects (usually there is just one). So when they took her off the machine they saw a lot of leaking through that valve, that meant going back on the machine to do more repairs. When they finished and tried to take her off the machine again is when her heart got 'unhappy.' All that to say, the second repair never got tested out. So when they challenge her heart on Saturday, if it handles pumping again they will be able to tell if the valve is working. If it isn't, she will need more surgery. If it is, she doesn't need more surgery for now (she will later in life though). We just wanted to explain that again, just in case we didn't make it very clear before (we are getting a better understanding of things). Please keep praying, she is so strong and has been doing good, we need more of that.
