At Home - One MORE to Go!

BACK HOME
We just arrived back home with our beloved little man. Cole is in good spirits, but is still a little groggy from the anesthesia. Also, he is continuing to announce every bout of flatulence with an "I pooted" moniker.

The verdict of the day was that Cole's heart is strong and he is ready to undertake the challenge of his young life - his third open heart surgery which will take place on Wednesday. The surgery will be performed by Dr. Larry Watts at Levine Children's Hospital in Charlotte, NC.

WEDNESDAY'S SURGERY
As some of you know, this is the third phase of the "Fontan Procedure" which is a complicated set of surgeries for children with a single ventricle heart. Instead of 4 chambers (a normal heart), Cole has one chamber which means that all of the blood mixes together and this creates a need for surgeries so that the red blood and the blue blood go to the correct places. Think of it as redoing the plumbing for a commercial office building. That is what is happening on Wednesday. For a more detailed description, google "Fontan Procedure" and read away.

CHANCES
This third surgery will involve placing a tube inside of Cole's heart so that the blue blood can get to the lungs effectively. His prognosis is very good in that there is only a 1 out of 100 chance that something could go wrong. That sounds very good because that means that there is only a 1% chance that something could go wrong. However, when you think about this a little deeper, the stakes rise a bit.

What is someone told you tomorrow that there was a 1 in a billion chance that you would be stabbed when you left your house...would you go to work? Most of us would. What about 1 in a million....I still would go. 1 in 100? I think I would be watching a lot of "The Price is Right" or whatever else comes on TV during a weekday when the rest of us are working. When the outcome is something horrible, 1 in 100 sounds too frequent to me.

Now, when that ONE occurence is life or death, you could see the predicament. If that ONE percent were to happen, it would mean Cole could have a stroke, have a blood clot, experience heart failure, and he would meet Jesus. He would be better off, but the remains of what he would leave behind would be a family that nobody would want to know. We would be, to put it nicely, devastated.

Some may think we are being over-dramatic about this, but until you have looked a surgeon in the eye and been told that there is a 1 in 100 chance that your baby boy will be gone in 2 days, please be slow to judge.

However, we know that Cole's life and his heart are in the Hands of the Creator of this world. The One that can move mountains, walk on water, heal the sick, etc. and that his heart will stop when HE ALONE decides it will. His will will be done, and that is what we want above all else.

That being said, it still creates for a bit of a tense moment when you feel like Abraham serving up Isaac to the Lord when you hand over your 2 year old son to a heart surgeon.

THANKS
Thank you so much to everyone for the kind thoughts, words, actions, and prayers. We still need them and will continue to need them. Even after his surgery, Cole faces a tough rehab where our family will still remain somewhat quarantined so that he does not get sick.

One other point, please know our heart when I say that we would love to be able to personally call each and every person to give you an update, but that is just not possible right now. That is the reason we created this blog - so that you would be able to check up on Cole when it is convenient for you and so that some of the burden of answering the same questions time after time is removed from us.

God Bless You all and Thank You for reading. More to come on Wednesday.