Four spells in less than 24 hours.....

So we thought yesterday might have been the big day; however, plans changed due to other cases that were more prominent. The good news is though that some little girl received a new heart!!! Dr. Forbes had to do a emergency surgery on another little one that crashed, and then he had the honor of putting in a new heart for a little girl! How miraculous is that? Now I can not say that I was not disappointed that Karter did not get to have her surgery; although it is comforting knowing that we are waiting on a doctor that is ranked in the top five of the country for pediatric heart surgeons and one of the best at fixing Karter's defects! To be honest I was more disappointed about the surgery being put off because it meant more time away from home. You must first all understand that before everything happened with Karter that my oldest Addison did not spend but maybe three or four nights away from me since she has been born! Yea I know some of you moms must be thinking I am nuts for not always letting her go spend the nights with her grandmothers but Addison and I are connected at the hip! So needless to say being away from her this long has been really tough!
You would think that the hardest part of this would be the fact that Karter is having OPEN HEART SURGERY...but here I am upset more because I miss Addison. I am so torn because I feel like I am choosing one daughter over another. This is heartbreaking for me yet at the same time I could NEVER imagine being away from Karter during this time. Please do not get me wrong I am still very scared and anxious about Karter's surgery! I just do not think that it will officially hit me until I am not longer able to see her when I want to because she is back in the operating room. I love both of my girls dearly and I just hope that Addison understands why I am not at home with her!
Anyways back to my updates! Since we learned that Karter was "bumped" (that is how they put it) from her spot we have had some minor set backs. She had a really bad night Wednesday night and did not sleep at all! We were up with her all night because of an upset tummy. During this time she proceeded to have two big spells along with some other minor little spells. She did finally go back to bed about 6 o'clock that morning only to get up around 9 to eat. Right after eating and going back to sleep she had another attack, for a total of three! This attack took her a lot longer than normal to recover from. What I mean by these spells/attacks is that her oxygen level dropped really low like in the 30's, sometimes it can come up pretty quickly with a little more flow of her oxygen and sometimes it can take a lot longer for her to come up even with a high rate of flow. This spell this morning took her almost thirty minutes to come up to about a 75% oxygen level. Due to the sudden increase in spells we were sent back down to the ICU.
Once in the ICU Karter had a clear read of almost 97% oxygen! This read is of course with her being on some flow of oxygen. However, about 9 this evening she spelled again making four spells in 24 hours. This spell took her almost 15 minutes to recover from which is not a long time but not a short time either. Luckily on the ICU level they are able to administer some other types of drugs that should help her throughout the night and prevent any major spells. So for tonight she is still on oxygen and doing good. My mother, who has thankfully been here since Monday, and I decided that tonight we needed some real rest and have made it back to the Ronald McDonald house for a full night of sleep in a REAL bed! Since Karter is in the cardiac ICU she has a private nurse with 24 hour care. We decided that we better get some sleep tonight in order to better take care of her over the next few days!
As far as surgery goes Dr. Forbes is pretty booked and will not get to us tomorrow. He MIGHT however open up the OR for Saturday and get us in the first time slot. This would be amazing especially with her spells coming more frequently! Hopefully we will know more in the morning!
As soon as we know a date I will post a quick update! For now though I am going to get some real sleep!! Well as real as sleep can be right now!

Love,

The McHams!

P.S. More to come on Karter's Bow of Faith Project! I will be posting pictues of all of the bows we have received so far that have been given to the hospital, hopefully I can get these in tomorrow!