first 36 hours

Sophia is recovering well. Christopher and I are taking shifts to sit with her around the clock. She is sometimes reactive and will open her eyes so we try to talk to her and hold her hand. The first night they expected her to be fairly unstable since the surgery was so major and she was on the heart-lung machine so long, but she showed them. She stabilized quickly and many of her stats (e.g. lactic acid and blood gases) have come back to normal. They were able to take her off some of the medications yesterday and also start her on a diuretic. She is very swollen so this will help remove excess fluid. Her heart is still beating on its own, has a good rhythm and conduction signals. She also has good blood flow to all her extremities showing that the arch repair went well. They were considering closing her chest this afternoon but Dr. Hanley wants to wait till tomorrow to avoid any problems compressing her heart. We will post how the chest closure goes tomorrow.