Post-op

Audrey has been home now almost a week and things have gotten better each day. Her incisions have been healing up great and don't appear to bother her much. She has had some trouble sleeping at night but we're not really sure if its due to any discomfort or her sleep schedule being so out of whack during the weeks in the hospital when she was woken constantly. Each night she has slept a little better and longer. She has been very happy and active during the day and has loved being back at home and we have all loved having her back and smiling again.

We had her post-op followup appointments today with both the surgeon and also with cardiology. They took some xrays and her surgeon thought everything looked good and was healing up as expected. They removed the remaining stitches in the spots where her tubes were and also the strips over her incisions and said that there is really nothing special we need to do for her surgery. We can pick her up normally and feel confident that all is ok.

The EP's did an ekg and also downloaded all of her data from the ICD to see how her heartrate is doing and has been the past two weeks. We have this constant anxiety about the possibility of her getting so worked up and causing arrythmias that would induce a shock but were thrilled to see that despite her loud crying we did not see anything at all to worry about. There was definitely nothing close to any shocks and her heart rate looked steady and solid. It was a big relief for us to see that everything was as expected and our biggest hope is that she'll have that defibrillator as an insurance policy and never have to use it.

We have confirmed our visit to Mayo on the week of August 22 and are now working out some of the specifics with our doctors there. I'm not sure that we'll ever feel 100% about the decision but we both know that the potential benefits are great enough for Audrey that we need to move forward.

Thank you to everyone for the love and support that you have given Audrey and our family.

- Mark