FAVORITE QUOTES:

"BE WHO YOU ARE AND SAY WHAT YOU FEEL, BECASUE THOSE WHO MIND DON'T MATTER AND THOSE WHO MATTER DON'T MIND."

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

A Year Ago Today...

This time last year Chris and I were sitting in a waiting room at Fairfax INOVA for Tatum to come out of surgery...Talk about one of the worst days of my life!!! I remember it seemed like forever that she was in there and that darn pager they give you seems to never work right. After a long 5 hours or so the surgeon came out to speak with us. He said in his 25 years of surgery he had never seen anything like Tatum before, neither had his PA. He informed us for the first time that instead of a co-arch ( what they originally thought she had) her entire descending aorta was small. While she was open he only tied off her over sized ductess (PDA), there was no correction to the aorta that could be made at that time. I never in a million years thought anymore would come of it and certainly not all this.

I was thinking, ok we are through this maybe a surgery when she is 5 and we'll monitor her untill then...LOL what a joke, that is what I get for thinking.

As the year has pressed on I feel almost as if i have been to medical school. I know realize that there is so much more to the heart problems and all else we have found out along the way is just trivial at this point.

Kind of ironic that our little heart baby is also a valentine girl. She was the only little girl in the PICU at the time so she received tons of attention and gifts. We knew then she was our special little girl already just melting every one's heart. Maybe St Valentine is Tatum's little angel that keeps her moving forward and doing so well...Well that and her very special Grand Dad Angel always looking after her. How lucky we are to have so much love around.

This is a picture of our little chunk the day she was born. I finally got to hold her for about 5 mins the 2 day and then not again until the day after Valentines...What a great belated gift...
We sure have come a long way, doesn't even seem like the same baby anymore :)

5 comments:

Aspen said...

What a beautiful story. St. Valentine sure knows what he is doing. Tatum has gotten so strong over the year...and so have you. Who knew all of this would make us so strong in the end.

LOVE YOU!

Nancy said...

It doesn't hurt to have a few angels around.

Your baby is beautiful. :)

Kerry said...

She certainly isn't the same baby... don't they make Uggs in her size now?!?!? :)

You must have been going out of your mind in the waiting room. Seems like such a long time ago, huh?

She is your sweet Valentine!

Anonymous said...

Happy Valentine's Day to you all. You had no idea back then what a true Valentine Tatum would turn out to be. She is an angel herself!

Teresa

Nicole said...

What a sweet angel you have. How long ago that must seem. No one should ever have to see their baby hooked up to that many machines. And now look at what a beautiful, thriving one-year old she has become.