Benjamin Surgery

I just wanted to let everyone know about Benjamin's surgery. It is scheduled for Wednesday December 13th. I don't know the exact time but most likely will be early in the morning. It is an open heart procedure where they will stop his heart and he will be put on the "heart/lung machine." The surgery only takes about two hours but they say he will be away from us for most of the day. This is because preparing him for the operation takes a while and also they will be monitoring him for a while after he wakes up. He will then be in the pediatric intensive care unit (P.I.C.U.) for a while before he is moved to the regular floor. We don't know much about who will be allowed to visit him while he is in the P.I.C.U. I do know that we will not be able to stay in the hospital with him during that time. They say we should plan on him being in the hospital for two weeks. However, most children only stay for about ten days. We will be going down to Salt Lake on the 12th to have all of his pre-op labs and everything done. Then because his surgery will be in the morning we will be staying there that night. We will probably be down there the whole time he is in the Hospital (with the exception of trips home to do laundry and get the mail).

Well that's about all the info I have for right now. Please let everyone who needs to know about this. However make sure everyone understands that I don't know if there will be regulations about who is allowed to visit and when. Also we have seen some pictures of what children look like after heart surgery and it is a little scary. So some of you may want to wait on visiting him anyway. I will let you know as soon as I find out all the rules and if there is anymore info.