Tomorrow we take Lyra in to have her stage II surgery, the Glenn procedure, finally done. It's taken a bit longer than we thought to get scheduled, but it's happening tomorrow. I'd say it's definately happening tomorrow, but I've been around hospitals in recent months and I know that nothing is definate until it's actually done.
The surgery was originally scheduled a couple of weeks ago, but because of space issues, it was pushed back. Also, it was decided that Lyra should try to get a little weight put on or at least be moving towards a positive weight gain. Well, that proved more difficult than it might seem. Lyra is a very active little girl, always kicking and moving around and lately even has been rolling over and grabbing her feet and working on sitting up. Maren and I eventually threw in the towel on the conventional methods revolving around solid foods and use of bottles and sippy cups. Lyra simply isn't interested in them as avenues of nutrition. Entertainment, sure, but nutrition? No way. So, during the evenings, we had to put a nasogastric tube in and give her formula supplements. Those generally were not as bad as it might sound. It's certainly no fun putting the tube in, but at that time of the night, she usually fell asleep not long afterwards and typically kept sleeping until we took it out a few hours later. We only gave her a couple of supplements and then took it out to let her sleep normally.
Anyway... the tube feedings had a fairly small effect, but she did gain a little bit of weight. We're hopeful that following the Glenn, her heart function won't be making her burn so many calories and she'll gain weight without resorting to anything drastic.
Tomorrow we're supposed to be at the hospital at 7am. The surgery is expected to last about 4 hours, maybe a little bit longer. Please click the link on the left regarding the second stage if you're curious about what's going to happen. Lyra has the added bonus of having two superior vena cavas (most people only have one, and if you have two you probably won't find out unless you end up with other heart problems), so she'll be getting a bilateral, bidirectional Glenn. Basically, that just means the surgeon will have to connect both SVCs to the pulmonary arteries.
I'll try to keep things more updated now that there's more going on again.