Recovery

Thank you everyone for all of your many thoughts and prayers! I am now home recovering so I figured I could update everyone about my surgery!

Friday 3:45am our alarm goes off and its time to shower and head to The Heart Hospital. I made sure to wear my lucky four leaf clover socks that the Mays family gave me for my last surgery!

About 5:30am The pre-op stuff began. This included paperwork, drawing blood, a chest xray, and starting my iv. Did I mention I hate needles? Well the nurse was so nice to say they would numb my hand for my iv... yeah well no one mentioned that it was a numbing shot... I didn't sign up for an extra needle to be stabbed into my hand.. After the numbing shot she started the iv but was unable to thread it therefore she sat there digging around in my hand for a while until she decided to give up and the anesthesiologist stepped in and put the iv in my other hand... Lets just say I was NOT happy and if this was any indication on how my surgery was going to go I was a little worried.

Around 7:15am it was time to head back to surgery. Night night for me!

Around 9:00am I woke up with a scratchy throat and busted lip from being intubated.(sp?) Once I was brought back to the room it was time for a popsicle! The nurse offered me a menu to order breakfast from and then realized Dr. Ryan ordered me to be on a liquid diet so all I had was beef broth! yummy... Then I was given pain meds!

A big thank you to the staff at The Heart Hospital Baylor Plano because they are absolutely the sweetest most caring bunch around! Regardless of my silly questions and comments they always smile and make you feel at home!

Around 11 I was released from the hospital. We spent the remainder of the day watching movies on the couch and sleeping. The pain from the incision was not enjoyable.

Today Win and Mom went with me to school to help finish setting up my classroom for my transition to our new curriculum. A big thank you to them both because I was very stressed out about how I was going to get it all done!

I don't have much of an appetite today, I have felt nauseous on and off, and I have a fear that I have urinary retention... Sorry if that is too much information but its true! The pain from the incision is less today but still hurts. Hopefully tomorrow I will be back to normal!

On a positive note I am now OBSESSED with Pinterest and can't wait to show off my new craft projects! Fun blogs to come!

Wireless!

Katy did great! Doc said he could see inflammation around the wires when he got in there and took them out. Hopefully now Katy can get past all the pain and discomfort and move on to the next stage of her rehab from her heart surgery. You can see from the photo she's awake and resting and we got a souvenir too :)

EARLY MORNIN

We just checked in at the hospital and are awaiting to finish up registration and pre-op stuff. We're hoping todays' procedure is just a day surgery and she can come home this afternoon. Either Jan (Katy's mom) or I will post an update when we hear from the surgeon. Mazy and Ninja had to fight over who got to give mommy a kiss goodbye first ^_^

Surgery

Tomorrow morning I will be going in to have my wires around my sternum taken out. We have to be at The Heart Hospital Baylor Plano at 5am and then surgery is scheduled for 7:30am! Win and my mom will be with me and hopefully Win will be able to update the blog so everyone knows my progress. My cardiac surgeon said if I am tolerating the pain meds well should be able to go home tomorrow afternoon, if not they will keep me over night! Thank you very much for all of your thoughts and prayers!

Update on my murmur: My cardiologist's nurse called yesterday to let me know that the stress echo with doppler confirmed that I have pulmonary stenosis. After I speak with my cardiac surgeon tomorrow I will hopefully know more abuot what that means for me!

WISH ME LUCK!

Frustrated

What is wrong with me? Why is something always wrong with me? Will my heart ever be healthy? These are the questions that go through my head all the time.
Last week I spend every afternoon at some sort of doctors appointment. My cardiologist and I are both concerned about why I still have a very loud murmur and shortness of breath. I cant climb a few stairs, or get in and out of bed in the middle of the night, let alone exercise without having shortness of breath. I'm not in the best shape but come on at the age of 28 I shouldn't have these constant problems. Keep in mind 7 months ago I had open heart surgery to close my VSD and they stitched a PFO... You would think my problems would be solved... but nope. So then I went to see my cardiac surgeon... after a 2 hour anxious wait in his office and a very unprofessional meeting here is what I know: I have surgery scheduled for next Friday to have the wires wrapped about my sternum removed which should solve my chest pain and constant inflammation, he thinks the murmur we are hearing is a flow murmur, I have to have a stress echo with doppler to determine my pulmonary artery pressures and then we can figure out what to do next.
So today I had my stress echo with doppler.... I hit my target heart rate at 160 in 4.5 minutes, and then my max heart rate of 190 at 8 minutes. PITIFUL! Its so frustrating! Anyways, the cardiologist reading the test today does not know my case so he wasn't very helpful... I will hopefully hear from my cardiologist and my cardiac surgeon in the next day or two before surgery.

I'm ready to be fixed! For real this time! Goodbye wires!

Waiting...

I have been putting this off for some time now but I guess now is as good of a time as any. A few weeks ago I had a CT scan done of my chest to check the healing of my sternum. In addition to the fact that my sternum had not healed enough, the CT also revealed a mass in my right breast. Last week I had an ultrasound and a mammogram which revealed a shadowing solid mass about the size of a nickle. Following that appointment we scheduled a needle biopsy which I had this afternoon. So now its waiting time. I should find out the results in 2-3 days but since my appointment was on a Thursday I will have to wait until Monday or Tuesday. I am very blessed to have many amazing family and friends supporting me through another crazy time in 2011. Of course I am hoping to hear the word benign but as crazy as this sounds I feel like if its malignant I can survive! I know that peace comes from God!

Many people choose to keep things like this private but talking through things is how I keep trucking forward! So there it is! The next few days will be spent with lots of family and friends and I am looking forward to that!

Love you all!

One Day Without Shoes

I could not wait to post this blog just to show off my cute students' toes!
For those of you that have not heard about Toms let me provide you with a little background.

One for One Movement

In 2006, American traveler Blake Mycoskie befriended children in Argentina and found they had no shoes to protect their feet. Wanting to help, he created TOMS Shoes, a company that would match every pair of shoes purchased with a pair of new shoes given to a child in need. One for One. Blake returned to Argentina with a group of family, friends and staff later that year with 10,000 pairs of shoes made possible by TOMS customers.

Why Shoes?

Many children in developing countries grow up barefoot. Whether at play, doing chores or going to school, these children are at risk:

•A leading cause of disease in developing countries is soil-transmitted diseases, which can penetrate the skin through bare feet. Wearing shoes can help prevent these diseases, and the long-term physical and cognitive harm they cause.

•Wearing shoes also prevents feet from getting cuts and sores. Not only are these injuries painful, they also are dangerous when wounds become infected.

•Many times children can't attend school barefoot because shoes are a required part of their uniform. If they don't have shoes, they don't go to school. If they don't receive an education, they don't have the opportunity to realize their potential.

April 5th was TOMS One Day Without Shoes Day to raise awareness! The link below explains it all!

http://www.onedaywithoutshoes.com/

So I got really excited since I LOVE TOMS... I own the black sparkle pair, the silver sparkle pair, and the red canvas ones.... So I came to school yesterday morning with a mission to spread the word to my students and go the day without shoes.
When class began I asked my kids, "Why do we wear shoes?" This question completely stumped them. After a little more digging around the ideas started flying: "so our feet dont get dirty," "so our feet dont stink," "so we dont step on glass," "so we dont step on bugs," and answers continued to roll. Then I said, "Do you know that there are children all around the world that do NOT have any shoes?" Their jaws dropped. They could not believe that they have lots of shoes in their closest and other kids had to walk around with no shoes at all. So I then proposed to them that we would honor all of those kids by spending the day in class barefoot.... At first you heard a few giggles and snickers but as soon as I took off my shoes all the students followed suit! Here are a few pictures of our feet!