Two Trips to Gainesville

In November, we made the trip to Gainesville for Riley to have her third heart catheterization.  The goal was to try and open up her pulmonary artery again.  Unfortunately, they were not able to get the blood flow moving much better, and the right side of her heart was doing two-thirds of the work.  We were told that we could put it off for 3-6 months but that she would need to have her second open heart surgery much sooner than we had expected.  

We agreed that there really was not a good reason to put it off.  Even though the doctor was confident that she would be fine waiting, there was still the risk that the extra pressure on the right side of her heart could cause other problems.  Also, there was no hope that it would fix itself, so why put it off? We scheduled the surgery for December 9th.

 In the hospital after the heart cath.  I love how she doesn't suck her thumb. It is always her pinkie and ring fingers on her right hand.






We made the trip down to Gainesville on Sunday, December 7th, and stayed in the Comfort Inn because the Ronald McDonald House did not have a room for us yet.  Riley had a good time exploring the room.  She found a notepad and pen on the nightstand and proceeded to do a full inspection of the room.  She would walk a few steps, stop, examine what was in front of her and "take notes" before moving on a few more steps and repeating the process.

Our journalist in the making!

After all of that hard work, it was time to kick back and watch some Super Why...

Not much else to report from day one of the trip, other than the fact that both mommy and daddy were nervous about the days ahead of us.  I will post more soon.