Surgery is Over

Surgery ended around noon. It took awhile for the doc to come talk to us but he just left (so I haven't been witholding info from you on purpose!). Overall the surgery went well. He did have to replace a portion of her aortic vessel as it was "rock hard" (in his words) when he attempted to clamp it as a routine part of the surgery. This portion of the aortic artery needed to be replaced first. They cooled her body down to 54degrees F (yes!) for this portion of the surgery so he could stop the heart/lung machine completely, so the blood stopped circulating. He replaced the damaged section with a graft and then moved on to replace the valve with a bovine/cow valve. He believes it was the radiation that damaged that small section of her aorta because the section above and just a little below it, were healthy and it was in a unique enough of a segment, that radiation is most likely to blame. I hope that all makes sense. Because they had to cool her body so much, there are normal clotting properties in her blood that are damaged (as expected) and so she was given some blood products in the OR already. She will be "out" several hours longer now because of the need to cool and now return her body temp to normal etc... They hope she can get off of the vent sometime this evening.

OK, that's all I know for now. It's about 1pm. We are going to find some lunch. When we come back, we should be able to sneak in to see her for a few minutes.

The recovery from surgery is ever as important as the surgery itself so please continue to pray that all goes well.
Thanks!
Leah