The Castle

We made to San Fran in good time today arriving around 3pm. We quickly found our hotel the Castle Inn and it's not bad. Parking is always a challenge, and for those of you who have read the past blogs know this is one reason why I don't like this place a lot. We picked this hotel because it has parking and its FREE. We chose to park in the basement thinking that it was the only area to park in. Needless to say I am glad that we are in the Prius because anything bigger could not have made the turn into the garage. After making it through the 7 foot wide door you drive into a small basement garage. Once in the basement there was only 1 stall left. There was a reason that no one was in this stall. This stall was almost impossible to fit into and the wall has writing on it- no backing into stalls. (I would like to find the person who posted that and have them come park for me!) I had to do about a 25 point turn and back into the stall with about a 1 inch clearance from a concrete post. I made it work and fit in just like a tight glove. Hopefully I can make it out in the morning. Enough car talk, tomorrow we check Owen into the hospital at 0900. No one has really given us a plan yet on what is going to happen. I assume we will get Owen checked in, not sure if we will go straight to the cardiac ICU or the transitional care unit. They will then check him in with vitals and questions the normal routine I'm sure. We will talk to the Mds sometime during the day to get the exact plan and see what time he will have surgery on Friday(hoping for first case in the morning). Owen will have the same surgeon that he had last time and the last words he said to us was "get him bigger for me" and we did. Chelsea did most of the work with growing this little guy and trust me it has been a fight for every oz that we have put on him. All of the pumping, fortifying, night feeding, spewing, has been worth it. Owen at 18 lbs. We have doubled his weight since the last time we were here. The size was so important so that they could operate on Owen's little vessels. It was too risky on Owens life if they were to attempt this last time. This is a scary and very serious surgery that Owen is about to have. There will be 3 major things completed in this surgery. First after opening Owen's chest they will place him on the bypass machine which will take over the pumping and oxygen perfusion that the lungs and heart normally do. They will then take out the shunt that they placed in the last surgery. The next step is to either fix his veins so that they are attached to the part of the heart that they are supposed to or do the Glenn procedure which is removing the superior vena cava and connecting it to the pulmonary arteries. I am not sure which one the will do first, we will find out tomorrow. Chelsea and I are scared, nervous and about everything else you can think of. There is not much more you can say than that. We have our love for each other and what else do you really need. We have done this before and will do it again. Hug your kids tonight and keep Owen in your prayers. PS At the bottom of our driveway leaving, Chelsea looked down at her phone and had a new voicemail. We had gotten a room at Ron's. We have been told that you had to be admitted into the hospital to get a room, but we think sometimes it's who you know. We are thankful, so thankful for this opportunity. The shuttle is such a nice thing. PPS The Castle is near Jamie and Eric's so we had a quick bite with them tonight. Good to see you guys!