Day Three- Surgery

Surgery scars

Surgery

I can literally remember every little detail from Elijah's surgery.
Whenever someone asks me about the surgery the first image I have in my mind is him laying in intensive care just an hour out of surgery.
The chest drain stitched into his little chest and seeing the blood drain out of him was like something out of a horror film.
I remember thinking how small his incision mark really was and to be covered by just a plaster!
I can think back and see the ward we were on, the surgeon coming round to draw the arrow on his chest.
We watched Mike the Knight, and C Beebies before we went down.
My legs were heavy, I wondered if this was it.
The last time I would ever see my baby alive.
I then had flashes of us going home on our own.
I held him as he was put to sleep and then he was taken from me and put on the operating table.
I couldn't even kiss him goodbye in case it was for the last time.
My legs buckled beneath me and I was carried from the room.
All my insticts told me to run, to leave to get away from the hospital.
5 hours later we got the call.
The surgery was a success.
They repaired the hole, cut away the excess muscle and due to narrowing valve being to narrow, it was not able to be saved and therefore replaced completely.
At the moment we are likely to be years away from another surgery whereby depending on how he grows would need his valve replacing again.
It feels as though we are always looking down the barrell of it, but I recently met a fellow TOF mum who has a 31 year old son who still hasn't has his valve replaced as it hasn't been needed which gives me great hope!
They can do so much now, cath labs, growing hearts in a lab by the time Elijah does go in for surgery again it may even be a minor procedure with the tech and developments they are making in this field 🤞
It can be hard not to worry about how another surgery may affect his life, his teenage years and over analyse the what ifs and forget the hear and now which is what I need to focus on.

I am blogging every day in Feb and taking part in the #chdphotochallenge to help raise awareness this heart month.

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The time Fajita night resulted in having a baby in a bath.

The newest Cockerill Do you all remember my ever so optimistic natural birth plan? You can read it here. However, spoiler alert, it didn’t happen. What did happen was something no one was expecting. Wednesday the 5 th July… a mundane sort of day spent cleaning the house and doing the weekly shop. With Greg going back to work the next day I was determined to make sure everything was ready for when this baby arrived! I was three days off my due date and still hadn’t had one single sign this baby was imminently coming. I had been receiving messages from quite a few people asking if baby was here yet. I was getting fed up as everything I had tried to induce labour failed miserably and every morning for the last two weeks I woke up disappointed I wasn’t in labour! I gave up, walking didn’t help, pineapple made me sick and I was beginning to tire of the raspberry leaf tea. This baby was staying put. In the evening I put Elijah bed, and we began to settle down for the eveni...

#bigkidsforgosh

I am sitting on the sofa with C Beebies blasting out and I look to my right, I feel a little hand grab mine. Elijah looks up at me and says, ‘Mummy’. This is one of those things that happens about a hundred times a day, but now and again I really take stock of them. I sweep his fringe out of his eyes and give him a little hug. There was a time that I may not have ever been able to do this. To be able to raise my (nearly) two-year-old as a normal, happy and healthy little boy. He may not have even be here at all. I am only able to do this because of Great Ormond Street Hospital. After Elijah’s diagnosis of Tetralogy of Fallot at birth, after his admission to NICU we had always known he needed open heart surgery to repair his heart. To put it simply, to save his life. Being a mother to Elijah means everything to me. GOSH saved my family. It was scheduled to be around the 6 month of age mark that he would have this surgery, from the latest consultant appointment a...

The one with Elijah's heart surgery.

We were back. April 22-28 2015, a year ago this weekend. In just two short weeks since we last went down to London. We had to go down the day before and check in and have another blood test. As all of the forms had been signed last time, we were out again within an hour or so. Back to the same family accommodation, in a different room and with a lot less luggage. Something felt different this time, although I didn't want to believe it was going ahead in the event it was cancelled again, deep down I knew it would be. The morning of the surgery I knew how I would feel as we had been through this all before. I didn't want to go out for a meal so we ate in the hotel room watching ch5 rubbish after Elijah went down in the travel cot. Its odd that through the whole pre admission, cancelled op and the actual operation I can remember what shit we watched on TV and what we ate for tea that night. One of those weird things that just sticks in your head. Sort of like when you remem...

Vicki Cockerill - NICU MUM Blog

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