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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