Successful Surgery

Yesterday God gave us all so much peace about Daddy Hammer's surgery. Even he was calm as they transported him up to the surgical pre-op room. It was that peace that passes all understanding which gave us full confidence that Daddy Hammer would be alright. At 11:45 he went into his 2 1/2 hour surgery. We sat in the cardiac waiting room and about 2 hours into the procedure we got a phone call that Daddy Hammer had come off the heart/lung machine right away and they were closing up. When the surgeon came in to see us he was all smiles. He said that Daddy Hammer had done wonderful and that he was very, very happy with how everything had went. They ended up doing 5 bypasses instead of the expected 3 which was a bit of a shock. But the doctor said that he wanted to make sure that he never needed to come back in for a tune up.

My mom was able to go in and see him for only 20 minutes because they have such big restrictions on post-op visiting on the first day. She said he looked really good for having just gone through major surgery. And she gave the seal-of-approval for his nurse. After that they have you go home and give you phone call updates. At 10 pm we got our update that he was waking up and doing excellent with expectations of getting him off the ventilator in the next few hours. This was our biggest hurdle because of our last ventilator experience. For us this was the test of how he would do recovery wise. He was extubated at midnight (praise the Lord!) Then at 8 am my mom was able to talk to him on the phone. We were so excited for when they would give us the green light to go in and see him. When we got to see him he was sitting up in a chair. It was wonderful to see just how God had prepared him to have a successful surgery.