All Went Well

 The surgery went really well.  They ended up not taking her back until 2:00pm instead of 11:15am.  Needless to say she was a little "hangry" by the time they took her.  Being on steroids and not being able to eat can form quite a monster.  The surgeon placed what they call an ICD.  It is a combination pacemaker and defibrillator. They implanted the wires on the inside of her heart.  Gage's defibrillator was placed on the outside of his heart when he received his.  Technology has come a long way.  An anesthesiologist did a nerve block when she was asleep to numb all of her chest area so she would have less pain when she woke up.  However, I think the area below where the device was placed was numbed, but not where the actual device was inserted.  Needless to say, she has been really sore.

The doctors would like for us to stay in the area for 10 more days.  Both the transplant doctors and the EP (electrophysiologist) doctors.  Some of the antirejection medicine Lindsey was on makes wound healing more difficult, so they had to do an extra layer of stitches for precaution.  They took Lindsey off of these medications for the surgery a couple days ago, so now her medication regimen has been completely changed.  There will be lab draws and drug levels to get figured out as well. Thus, they would like us to stay until the 10 day post op visit.  

Right now, Lindsey is not using the pacemaker, since she is in sinus rhythm.  They made the settings for the pacemaker to go off when her heartbeat hits 50 bpm. The defibrillator will go off when she has over 30 consecutive  beats over 250 bpm. Hopefully she will never need the defibrillator, but they set the settings as high as possible, so there won't be any accidental firings. 

I am so late in getting this posted, because we have been working with social workers on getting in the RMH.  I had to run over and check in after Lindsey got out of surgery, so we have a place to stay for the next 10 days.  We are truly in a great place. Getting really good care and feel our doctors have our best interest. 

Denise, one of the many favorites came by for a visit.

Lindsey Post op ready for a picture

An xray of what the wiring looks like.  One wire goes into the atrium (top part of the heart) and the other wire going into the ventricle (bottom part of the heart).  The one in the bottom has a thicker coil because that is the one that acts as the defibrillator.

A fun view from the 5th floor of the hospital on our walk last night.