Open Heart Surgery #2 - October 15

So much for Alyson needing only two surgeries in her life!!! :) On October 15th Frank and I came down to visit Alyson for the day and we were told that she was going back in for an emergency open heart surgery that day. The cardiologists had a conference that morning and looked at her last echocardiogram as they were concerned about what they were seeing. It turns out that her stitches that sewed up her tricuspid and pulmonary valve were torn from the pressures in her heart and blood was going back through the places they were preventing from in the first surgery. This time instead of doing a partial oversew of the tricuspid valve they were going to oversew it all they way because that may have caused her some issues too. They reason they didn't oversew it all the way in the first surgery was because the surgeon would have hit a conductor in her heart probably making Alyson need a pacemaker but the surgeon said that if they didn't oversew it this time it will be worse off for her than needing a pacemaker. She did great in this surgery (she was 37 days old) considering that her previous one was only 12 days before that. As expected what would probably happen she did have partial heart block and she needed to be put on their temporary pacemaker to see if her rhythm would go back in sync. The cardiologist said that if her rhythm didn't go back to normal within 7 days then it probably wouldn't and she would need a pacemaker. She did have a rough go after the surgery but was doing pretty well considering the circumstances and after a few days she started to make good progress.