The 1st day of Abby's life with her new heart!!

Abby is doing so great this morning!!  When I saw her early this morning, her eyes were open wide and she was ready to talk to me.  She still has her breathing tube in, and probably will until later today (hopefully not longer), so she has to write everything down.   She wrote that she feels really good, and that she wants to get up and walk around!! Totally amazing!  She also asked if she can see the old heart, I wanted to do this too, but we weren't able to.  Last night she asked if she had her new heart in, when we said yes, she got a big smile on her face, well, as big as it could be with a tube in her mouth.  One funny thing is that she keeps asking for milk.  She never asked for milk with her old heart, it must be something that the donor loved to drink :)  She can't drink anything because of the tube, so we're back to occassionaly swabbing her mouth, so she asked the nurse last night to swab it with milk.  She's written over and over again that she wants milk, then she underlines it, then she draws mad faces by it!  She's so funny, hasn't even lost her humor through all of this.  She is hooked up to so many machines, but I'm hoping that little by little she will be weaned off of them until she is "connection" free.  She wants that tube out so bad...she keeps pointing to it and then pointing her thumb out the door, like get this thing out of me.  Abby also said she can already feel her new heart and that it feels so good pumping in her body.......she can already feel the difference!

When the surgeon, Dr. Kaza, came to talk to us last night after he was finished, he told us how sick her heart really was.  He described it as just a bag with air in it, it really wasn't doing a whole lot of anything.  We didn't realize it was so sick because Abby is so tough, she acted like she was okay, but she wasn't.  It wasn't pumping the blood to the other organs like it needed to, so they're going to take some time to heal, but they will.  It's just a good thing that Abby got her heart when she did, things could've gotten a lot worse.  Dr. Kaza just kept saying how strong of a kid she is, but we knew that already.  He said the surgery couldn't have gone better, it just took a little longer to stop the bleeding because of the damage done to the other organs.  He was extremely pleased.  I loved it when I told him how thankful I was for him and he said that he just feels so fortunate to be able to have the job he does because he gets to help work miracles.  What an incredible person.

Everyone keeps wondering if I was able to sleep at all last night.  I was so tired after that long, long day and I wanted to stay in her room so bad, but there wasn't any room for me, so they sent me to a sleep room in the icu waiting room.  I was in there for about 20 minutes, when I got a phone call from my good, good friends Ali and Cozz.....they were here, at PCMC looking for me!!!  I didn't even know they were coming, they totally surprised me!  Even though they could only stay a couple of hours, it made all the difference to me to have them here.  They got to see Abby, and she wrote "HI" on her paper and then used sign language to say "I Love You" to both of them.  We all cried and just spent the 2 hours being together.  After having them here I was able to fall asleep for a few good hours, and I woke up feeling better than I have in a long time.  What a great surprise, it made my day of miracles even better!   

Abby is still critical for about 24 hours.  She also could still reject the heart or get an infection.  We're not out of the woods yet, but things are looking good.  It's going to be a hard week because she'll be in the cardiac intensive care unit.  There's not enough space to sit in her room, and they only allow a couple of people in at a time.  If you're wanting to see Abby, it might be better to wait until she's moved up to the 3rd floor.  It's just hard when she's in the icu still.  If everything goes as planned, without any problems, she'll be in the cicu for about 5-7 days.  The we'll move to the 3rd floor and will be there for 1-2 weeks before we can go to our Sugarhouse home.  We have now moved on to the next stage of our journey, the recovery stage.  I think it will be so much easier than the waiting stage, I might even be able to really start sleeping again.  I don't think I've really slept since May 18th.

Thank you everyone for all of your prayers and messages yesterday, it was definitely a day we will never forget.  Don't forget to pray for the family of the donor, while we are going through such a happy time, they are going through a horrible time, it will also be a day that they won't forget but for such a different reason.  Keep wearing those "Team Doman" shirts, we love to see it and hear about all of the great things that are happening.  We love all of you!!