This week has been total insane with 2 perfectly healthy babies at home and one very sick baby in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. The first scare was to come at 1:30 AM when I was at home with the other two babies. Mary Jo called me to tell me one thing you never want to hear,
"we are assembling the surgical team"
It hit out of the blue, my brother and I drove home late at night leaving Mary Jo at a family PICU sleeping room. We rushed back into Des Moines (1 hour drive), and waited to find out what had happened.
Before we got to the hospital they had taken Kristina to get a CT scan to find out what was happening.
The problem was an issue with an accumulation of fluid around the heart, this is a bad thing. The drain had a clot which was causing fluctuations in blood pressure and heart rate. The fix, once found was to add more drain lines to rid the excess fluids from around the outside of the heart. The next issue was the fact she had extensive swelling due to the surgeries. There was no way to close her until the swelling went down, so they put a gortex pad to keep her closed. Now she resided in a Procedure Room next to the Operating Room just in case.

We got into the room after the surgery, it was amazing to see so many people working on balancing all the medication to keep her going, it was like a ballet of sorts. There were Cardiologists, Neurologists, nurses, even the Head of the PICU was there, moving all around her like a queen bee in a hive. This service was to go one for many more days and nights, in the procedure room.