Day 1 of Recovery

Good morning to Namibia.
Our day started a bit rough this morning about 12 hours ago, with a call from the hospital call saying her blood pressure was low and they needed to take her back into the OR (operating room) to check for blood clots. So they eventually only did this at 2pm and removing the clots and the blood that had accumulated inside her chest cavity. The good news is now, that she returned 3 hours later into the CVICU (Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit) with her chest stitched up and closed, as they had left is open by means of a 'bridge' after the first surgery, and had only planned to stitch it together on Friday afternoon, so no need to do that later, kind of a two in one deal. She keeps waking up lightly and calms back down to sleep, when we talk to her. Currently we are playing classical music to keep her from moving, as with 5 IV's and the ventilator in her throat. We are aiming to take baby steps, every day to nurse her back to full health and the next step, would be to get her off the ventilator within the next 24 to 48 hours. We have a bed space assigned to us, here at the hospital, as we are not allowed to sleep next to her bedside in the ICU. She has a very sweet, caring and highly capable nurse called Terry during the day, who is assigned exclusively to her monitoring her vitals at all times. Twice a day at 7 in the morning and 7 in the evening the shifts change for the medical nursing teams and then the parents have to leave the ICU for 30 minutes. So much for today from the Lucile Salter Packard Childrens Hospital, Palo Alto, California.
Thank you once again for all your text messsages, calls, emails, thoughts and prayers - be assured that Cara and ourselves are feeling them over here.