sorry for no updates

Doing this blog is a little more stressful this time around... its hard for me to write when going through so much. So sorry I never told anybody whats going on because I know some people were waiting.

I don't know where to even start, since surgery was now 2 days ago (almost). I will do my best...

Wednesday before surgery was tough. We have an amazing team of nurses and doctors on the ICU who have come to know and love Jacob. So everyone was coming up to me and him, and trying to be encouraging and positive, but you could tell in everyone's eyes that they were scared. Numerous were crying as their shift completed and they came in to say good-bye to us. Even when the surgeon came in, his undertone was negative, when usually he is a very positive person. Lots of family came in also, which helped me remain stronger, because even though I am a emotional person and have cried in front of probably everyone I know, I hate when people see me cry. Especially at times like this when I need to be strong.

My ICU doctor, my favorite one, is working this week and he promised me that I could hold Jacob. So the respiratory team and nurses came in and managed to transfer him from his bed to my arms, so Alex and I both had a chance to hold him. :) That meant everything to me, because we were earlier told that we would not be able to do that. Also my kind doctor allowed Isaac and Nico to come in to see their brother too (also against the rules.) They were telling Jacob to be strong and Jehovah will help him. Isaac was singing him lullabies and mama was trying to once again be strong.

I did manage to sleep 4 hours that night, but when I awoke I found out that baby Olivia (that I talked about on facebook) a 2 week old JW who just had her 1st surgery for HPLH and looked perfect just four hours ago.. passed away. Not a good way to start the morning.. I was crying for them, I was crying for us. This news also meant that our surgeon was here in the mid night for baby Olivia and in just a few short hours has to do a full day complex surgery on Jacob.

So 7am came. I was feeling a million different emotions. Yet all our favorite nurses turned out to be working. Plus we got the respiratory therapist we knew. I felt assured to see so many smiling faces. One nurse even wore her Ohio State gear for "good luck" she said, so that was sweet because I knew all day everyone was going to be praying for Jacob and thinking of him.

Surgery took about 11 hours. We got updates every 2 hours. Everything was going well. But than when they tried to take him of the heart lung bypass machine his only heart fluttered a few times. Our surgeon looked at things again and noticed his heart was tilted. So he had to fix that, and they tried again to take him off bypass. This time the echo still showed extremely poor heart function. So he decided to put him back on the machine and let his heart rest for 45 minutes or so. At this point I pretty much lost it and was begging Jehovah to help baby Jacob even more than ever before. Than we got the call, that Jacob was off bypass!!! I was happier than I have been since I can;t even remember. Thank you Jehovah!! Hugs were coming from all around! We were very happy!

A while later Dr. Galantowicz came out it talk about the surgery with us. He said that while he was in the heart he noticed some more problems. Like he had a heart attack! Probably happened while he was in the womb. Isn't that crazy? I didn't even know that could happen. The Dr. said he hasn't seen this in a long time. So part of his heart was dead from that. Also, as I mentioned earlier his heart was tilted and not in the right place. So he had to fix that. He also found the leak in the tricuspid valve was because part of the valve never fully emerged, but he was able to fix that a little bit to hopefully help it leak less. His heart function was really bad still.

But we made it through surgery, even though our baby still has a lot more to endure and fight. He is in extreme critical condition at this point.