5:55 AM - night 3

didn't sleep well at all yesterday either...i think this time i am eating breakfast before I go to bed today. tonight is my last night for the week....whew!

there are some sick babies in here...all have cardiac problems they were born with. there are a couple that are tiny..but they were all created just the same. who knows how God is going to use their defect to impact the lives of others. i have to believe that.
there is one here that had open heart surgery yesterday for HLHS - hypoplastic left heart sydrome - meaning that the whole left side of her heart did not develop fully. so in turn, the mitral valve & aortic valve are either tiny or absent as well as the left ventricle and the first part of the aorta. that is major! the only way to survive is with open heart surgery either with a heart transplant or staged palliation, which comes in 3 operations - the norwood, which is done right after birth and changes the right ventricle into the main ventricle; the bidirectional glenn, which is done at about 6 months of age and directs half the blood returning from the body to the lungs. The last operation, the Fontan operation, is done at 2 years of age and diverts all of the blood returning from the body to the lungs. The survival rate of about 5 years old is 70-75%. Can you imagine having all of that surgery done by the time you were 2 years old?!
Anyway, she was brought up tonight and while I was stocking the room cart, i peeked over and could see her tiny little chest open and her tiny little heart beating. I am still amazed, even though I have seen it before.

God wasn't playing around when he made us.