After that, we checked in at the hospital, and were up in McKenna's room on the Cardiac Floor by around 3pm. She is sharing a room with a little boy from Tampa who had open heart surgery three weeks ago. People come from ALL OVER to be at Children's- we are so lucky to have it close by. Thankfully, once her initial check in was done, she didn't have to stay in her room. So we took her to play in the playroom, went for some walks, played in her room, etc. It made it much easier not to have her stuck in the crib, since she wasn't on any IVs or monitors yet. Her IV for the Heparin drip was supposed to have been in place by 7:30 or so, but the IV team was swamped and finally someone from the floor agreed to do it. While we were waiting, she ate some dinner in the room and was exhausted bc of course she didn't take any afternoon nap. We kept her awake for the IV placement, because otherwise we were sure she would fall asleep and then have to get woken up right afterwards for the IV. So by the time we went for the IV at around 8:30, she was sort of beyond herself tired......
Thankfully, the nurse was able to get it in on the first try, yay! McKenna was NOT happy about the process, but at least it went quickly. They were also able to do her blood draw with the same stick, which was great. Much better than when she was sick and it took 15 or 20 tries to get an IV in!
We gave her a bottle right after that, and she was asleep in about five minutes. Hopefully she will sleep through the night and not have to get woken up a bunch of times for vitals, etc. Brett is staying in the room with her tonight, and I am at our hotel across the street. Its my first night EVER sleeping in a different place than her. Weird. But I am so tired, I think I'll actually be able to sleep... There's only room for one person to stay over with her, and since we are sharing a room, it is really quite crowded. Brett can monitor the heparin drip tonight, and I will stay over with her tomorrow night.
She can't have anything to eat and no milk to drink after 4am, so its only juice and water in the morning. Her surgery is scheduled for noon, and she is the third surgery of the day for Dr. Taghinia. We are hoping this is so that he can get two easy, short ones out of the way and then spend the rest of his day focused and not rushing through McKenna's procedure, which is obviously the most complicated and longest. They have estimated that it will be 4-5 hours for the surgery, and they are also going to try to do an echocardiogram while she is still sedated, so it could be quite a long process.
So, tomorrow morning she will come off of the Heparin drip around 8am, and we will entertain our hungry girl the best that we can until its time for her to go in around noon. Thanks for all of your prayers and encouragement. We appreciate it so much and so does McKenna!
And now, sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.
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