In Recovery - Hoping for Boring

Rowan's surgery went well. He is in stable condition. He has several new tubes, but fewer medications. He is still on the respirator and will be for a while. He is sedated by not paralyzed. He is a little puffy, but not as bad as we expected based on how many people warned us what he might look like. His rib cage and incision are still "open" but covered with sterile material to prevent infection. The surgeon is planning on closing him on Monday after he has had time for swelling to go down a little.

As far as recovery goes, the surgeon told us that he expects Rowan to be in the CICU (Cardiac Intensive Care Unit) for 7-10 days. Then he expects Rowan to be in a transitional floor for 7-10 days. Then he expects Rowan to go home. We like that idea. A possibility of 2 weeks until we go home doesn't seem bad at all when we thought it would be at least a month. We will be happy to stay longer if he needs it, but it would be nice to half the time we thought to be away from our daughter.

Waiting for him during surgery was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. One things that was nice is we went down to the surgery floor with him, so it wasn't like they took him away from us - we just parted ways as he headed to the OR and we headed to the waiting room.

In the waiting room, we busied ourselves with books and Netflix to pass the time. I even snuck in a nap. The hardest thing was how late it ended up running. We met with the surgeon a little after midnight and made it back to see Rowan around 2:00AM. We're still pretty tired today, but relaxing in his room with him while he works on recoving. Same old game of hurry up and wait.