Day 28: The Words We've Been Waiting To Hear

Today marks 4 weeks that Evie has been in the hospital. Four weeks ago, we had never even heard the words "ECMO" or "malrotation, " and now we know more about them than we ever wanted to.

But the best news ever is that Evie will come home by Sunday night! We are not sure of the day or time, but I hope to learn that during my visit tomorrow. She will come home with an NG tube (no big deal - been there, done that) and she also will be hooked up to oxygen, so she will have a home health nurse come out to check on her.

Our staff meeting today with the doctors and nurses went well, and all our questions were answered. The next surgery Evie will have will be the one to correct her malrotation, and will probably take palce in a month or two. Beyond that, her next heart procedures will be not surgeries but more like an angioplasty, in which the narrow parts of her arteries will be expanded using a balloon and a catheter threaded through her groin artery. I guess these are surgeries, but at least no incision is made!

We learned today that her malrotaion surgey will involve a vertical incision on her stomach, kind of continuing the line of her chest incision, and usually only requires a 2-3 day hospital stay for recovery. She will have a long scar line down her front, but we hope it will not be very visible when she is older.

Here is Francis, whistling Evie to sleep today. He is wearing a yellow gown because they were testing her for an infection, but it turned out she didn't have any after all.