First Visit to the OR--PDA Ligation

Friday, January 29, 2010 8:27 PM, EST

"Don't stop believing..."

The surgery was a success.

Margaret Grace was wheeled away to the OR at around 2 PM today and was wheeled back to her station (highly "mellowed") at 3:15. The surgeon said that the procedure had been successful--uneventful, even.

Beth and I are, of course, grateful. We were told by many people that this was a "routine" procedure and indeed it turned out to be so. But seeing your little boo put under anaesthesia is not a walk in the park.

What happens now? She's waking up slowly and the doctors said to expect that she will get a bit worse before she gets better. Beth will stay tonight.

The "real" work happens day by day over the next few weeks. Will this help her lungs get healthy enough to get off the ventilator? That's the big question this surgery is meant to address. We don't know yet. With time, we will.

The surgeon was surprised at how large the duct he closed really was--even larger, he said, than he expected based on her echocardiogram. It may, therefore, been having an even more pronounced negative effect on her breathing than we expected.

We still have a long way to go. But this appears to have been a good and important day for Margaret Grace Waltemath Lewicki.

We give thanks and praise to God for the blessing of this day. We thank you for your prayers and good wishes that continue to strengthen our daughter and our family. We give thanks for the First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn and the Marble Collegiate Church. We give thanks for my mom, Debbie, and Beth's dad, Gary, who are able to be here to care for James. We give thanks to the one who was, at once, both Wounded and Healer.

***

During the surgery, Beth and I stepped downstairs into the beautiful "wintergarden"--a large, indoor atrium--here at the Children's Hosptial. We were drawn by a young man (24?) playing the guitar and singing. We were the only "adults" in his audience--the others were all kids, six of them, all under age 12, towing IVs or sitting in wheelchairs. His voice was beautiful and the scene was, too. All of us, differently wounded and vulnerable, being seranaded--and probably, each of us, transported--by the power of a beautiful human voice. (Beth wanted me to tell you he ended with the request of a 10 year-old, "Don't Stop Believing..."