Whitney is doing GREAT!!!!!

Yeah! Whitney made it! We are so grateful to Dr. Brown and all of the staff that helped with the miracle of fixing Whitney's heart today!!! Dr. Brown met with us around 3:15 p.m. while Whitney was in the recovery room. He explained what he saw when he was doing her surgery. The mitral valve normally has two "flaps" or the word he used was "leaflets" (not sure of the technical term) that allow the blood to flow correctly, he said in this repair he has seen three "flaps" but Whitney had SIX "flaps". He said it was "intriguing" to see how her mitral valve was working and was put together and that it was like putting together a puzzle to make the repair of her mitral valve given the added difficulty of the way her mitral valve was structured. He also talked about the patches for the ASD and the VSD. She had two fairly large holes in the VSD, one the size of an oblong quarter and one about the size of a dime and one in the ASD that was also about the size of an oblong quarter. He commented that these were pretty big for someone so little.
Dr. Brown also mentioned that she had about 4 times the blood volume of a normal person flowing from her heart to her lungs. This explains her difficulty breathing. Her lungs were basically being flooded by the excessive blood flow.
Whitney is now in the ICU unit and hooked up to many machines that are monitoring all of her vitals. She has one nurse that is assigned only to her and will keep a close eye on her because Whitney will be her only patient. We feel really good after getting the chance to go in and see Whitney. We are so proud of her and so HAPPY she will be feeling like a whole new person very soon! THANK YOU DR. BROWN and everyone at Riley that is caring for our little angel!!!

I have taken pictures and will try to post them later tonight.

A BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has been praying for Whitney and keeping her (and us) in your thoughts today. It means the world to us!