We’ve known for a long time that Maddie will need surgery to repair a heart defect the cardiologists found when Jen was still pregnant with her.  She has a rare condition called tetralogy of fallot where the wall separating the two chambers of her heart has a hole in it.  This causes oxygenated blood coming from the lungs to mix with un-oxygenated blood coming back from around her body.  She has other aspects of the defect as well, and when combined together, it reduces the amount of oxygen being passed to the rest of the body and could lead to symptoms of slightly blue tinged skin, to poor development, and more seriously, to shortened lifespan.

The cardiologist recommended that we wait until she is bigger to do the repair surgery – at least 6-7 months.  We took daily readings of her blood oxygen levels for 8 months and based on her development, the cardiologists and surgeons scheduled her surgery for the day that she turned 8 months old, April 18th, 2016.

Here’s an email I wrote to an old friend and pastor:

The long awaited day has come and Maddie will go in on Monday morning for her surgery to repair the heart defect. We are so grateful that she’s grow so well over the past 8 months. The doctors have prepped us for the day of and recovery afterwards.

It will take about 4 hours for the actual surgery and about 1 day in the ICU and then she will be transferred to the recovery rooms where we can be with her until she’s eating and interacting as normal.  They estimate about 5-7 days in the hospital.

Thank you for your faithful prayer for our family and we ask that you continue to ask for God’s blessing on our family.

It has been a challenging winter, but with the surgery over, the weather better, and work being less stressful, we are hopeful that this summer will be ordinarily peaceful.

Below are a few pictures of Maddie the few days before the surgery and the morning of.  A few days before the surgery, she’s showing off for the camera.

Crazy 姐姐 (older sister) and 姨姨 (aunt) were being hilarious…

She loved bath time and splashed all over the place.

She was standing up and cruising around her toys.  

The morning of the surgery, we arrived at the hospital with a very angry Maddie since she had to fast for many hours beforehand.  She was grabbing and reaching for anything to try and eat, including the blood pressure cuff.

Here’s Jen holding her up and me trying to get her to smile for the camera.