Sarah’s surgeon came to our room today to talk to us about Sarah’s surgery. We found him to be thorough, calm, patient, and easy to understand. He completely explained to us Sarah’s condition, the implications of her condition if left untreated, the (only) available treatment, the procedure that will be followed tomorrow, and the associated risks.

We had been told most of this information before, but it was good to get the whole picture one more time. One thing that we had not been told until that moment was that in addition to being placed on a heart/lung bypass machine, the bypass machine will be used primarily to cool her system in preparation for hypothermic sedation.

The nature of Sarah’s heart anomaly is such that everything that needs to be repaired is behind her heart. When her chest is opened up though her sternum, and the pericardial sack is opened, the heart will need to be lifted out of its cavity and turned over to access it from behind. This will require the aorta to be folded over like a garden hose with a kink in it. For this reason, even the heart/lung bypass machine will not be able to continue pumping blood to the body. To preserve her body and most critically her brain, Sarah will undergo what is called Deep Hypothermic Circulatory Arrest (DHCA). Sarah’s circulation will be taken over by the heart/lung bypass machine, her heart will be stopped and drained of blood, and the bypass machine will cool Sarah’s body and brain down to about 55 degrees. When Sarah’s body reaches that temperature, the heart/lung bypass will be shut off. The surgeon assured us that Sarah could endure this condition for up to 45 minutes, and that he believed he could complete the repair in far less time than that.

We’ve had some time now to process that information. Stephanie and I have both, separately, gone through a spectrum of responses, from disbelief to numbness, to terror, to tears, and back again. We pray that Jesus would be with her when she leaves us, walk with her, love her, and bring her back to us in under 45 minutes.