Tag: Gwennie Ru

Gwennie Ru and the Patched Heart

Shirleyjdietz6 Comments

As I said in the previous post, Gwennie will be glad to read this someday and know her history.

I can think of a hundred happy adjectives to describe how I feel today about GwennieRu’s recent VSD surgery, but I will stick with relieved, grateful and blessed. She now has expectation of normal growth and lifespan. She may get discharged from the hospital today, which is absolutely amazing.

Surgery, originally scheduled for Thursday, was postponed to Friday morning. This was a good thing since it put her first on the surgeon’s list for the day. Julia and Kevin took Gwennie to the hospital early Friday morning, and difficult as it was, handed her over to the surgical team. The other grandma and I joined them in the waiting room.

The first hour in the OR, Gwennie was sedated (so glad they did that first) and then IV’s were inserted so that she could be connected to the heart lung machine. Then the surgery started and we were given hourly updates by the staff.

The surgeon had previously explained this process to us. After the heart lung machine was ready, her chest was opened and her heart was stopped so they could work on it. At Gwennie’s age her heart is about the size of a large strawberry so you can imagine how delicate this sewing job had to be.

The incision in the heart was made in the right atrium, and from there, the hole in the ventricle was accessed through the tricuspid valve. A dacron patch was stitched over the hole, which was described as being large. It was tested for leaks, and then the heart was closed and started back up again. Sounds simple, but I can’t even imagine how they did it without lasting damage to any nerves, or the heart itself. The doctor did say that they cool the heart down so it doesn’t need as much oxygen while it’s without circulation.

It was so hard to see her when she came out of recovery. But it was the knowledge that each one of the wires, tubes and drains had a vital part in keeping her safe that made it tolerable. The pain meds kept her sleeping a good part of that first day, but she did wake up and took her bottle that night.

A girls has got to eat…

The next day, Saturday, the drain and the pacer wires, the intra jugular port and a couple IV lines were removed. In the afternoon she was doing well enough to move to the step down unit.

Yesterday in step down, she was weaned off oxygen. She seemed very comfortable and without pain and was playing with her toes and toys like she normally does. Today, if all goes well, she may come home. Isn’t that amazing?!

So, for any of you who read my previous posts and had compassion, maybe offered up a prayer for Gwennie Ru, know that we appreciated that prayer. God gifted men and women with the ability to do some crazy stuff medically, and Gwennie Ru was in the right place and time to benefit from it. He was watching over her, and us as we waited.

Postscript: They are home!

Working in Gwennie Ru’s Orchard

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Today, on her day “off” from work, Julia is pulling weeds in the orchard.
I was out early pulling weeds too. Then Julia brought her truck with this lovely mulch to spread around the young trees.
She also brought the supervisor, who promptly fell asleep.
We hauled and spread, straightened fencing and did our best to frustrate the fire ants.
A dozen trees set free from weeds and two tired (and sweaty, dirty) people who are glad to have the job nearly done.
Gwennie Ru spending time in her orchard.

Gwennie Ru and the Magic Sleep Suit

Shirleyjdietz2 Comments

One morning last week I came to do granny’s day care with Gwennie and daddy Kevin met me at the bedroom door.

“We had a great night! We put her in this sleep suit and it worked like magic. She only woke up once!”

Well, I could hardly wait to see what on earth a sleep suit could be.

Sure enough, Gwennie was asleep, and it most certainly was a suit that she was wearing. She looked like an astronaut, minus the helmet. She was lying on her back in this puffy yellow fleece coverall with zippers coming up both sides. Her arms were stretched out wide on either side and the thickness of the suit kept her from bending them very much. The lower part of the suit was bulging around the abdomen with two tubes out the bottom for her legs – lots of room for moving around. She looked very warm and cozy. I am very much in favor of keeping babies warm.

That’s kind of ingenious, I thought. A cross between an incubator and a straitjacket. Normally, when Gwennie Ru rouses from sleep, or is startled by noise, she starts jerking her arms around, hitting herself in the face and rubbing at her eyes and ears. That wakes her up for sure. This suit gently holds her arms out but still gives her some room to move inside the sleeve. And the same with the legs. I watched as she fussed a little, gave up, and went back to sleep.

Ingenious. I kind of want one.

In my size.

Most of the time her legs aren’t even in the leg compartments.

Life at Gwennie Ru’s House

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Gwennie Ru, my new granddaughter lives in North Carolina with her mom Julia, and dad Kevin.

One late evening at the supper table, my daughter Julia said “Oh, by the way, there wasn’t anyone signed up for bringing a meal to youth meeting this week so I signed up.” This was the night before the meeting and my eyes went wide. I might have said something like “and how is this going to work out?” I knew that Julia and Kevin both had to work all the next day, and I also have a problem keeping my mouth shut. But, no one seemed overly concerned, and Julia got up from the table and went to Dollar General (at 8:30 pm) for spaghetti supplies for 30 hungry kids.

The next morning I came over to do granny daycare duties and saw that the table was loaded with french bread, linguini noodles and sauce in jars. Hmm…

Gwennie Ru took her bottle and an hour or so later was sleeping in her bassinet. I went out to the kitchen to say good morning to Kevin, who works at home, and found him in the kitchen. He was cooking noodles and trying to get ready for a conference call at the same time. I thought he looked a little tense.

He had opened all seven packages of linguini and put them in a pot of water, which was starting to boil. But who could really tell since the pot was so full that it couldn’t be stirred? It was hard to even put a spoon in it to try to stir.

I am not a wonderful cook and generally have very little advice to give on the subject but this was clearly a disaster in the making. “Kevin, this is not going well. Seriously, you need help.”

“Are you offering?” Hope sprang up in him. I could feel it.

“I guess I am.” I nodded.

And with that he went, rather quickly I thought, over to his desk and a couple minutes later was on his call.

Honestly, I could not move the noodles around in the pot at all and decided that the first needed thing was more space, and the second was more water. I found another large pot and filled it with hot water from the tap and set it on the stove. I began lifting clumps of linguini out of one pot and into the other.

I suppose many people my age know that as kids we used to make glue out of flour and water, right? Those are the basic ingredients of noodles as well and, unstirred, they pretty much glue themselves together in large clumps. The process was well underway.

I took out what I estimated to be about half of the noodles, and tried again to stir the pot. Now there was room for more water so I added that as well. I thought I was making good progress and the added water had cooled down whatever was taking place in the pot. The second pot was going considerably slower than the first and was not a worry.

What was a worry was thinking about where all the noodles were going to go at some soon approaching time. I don’t know about you, but I always think I’m not cooking enough spaghetti. When they’re dry, the noodles look so little and thin, so you throw in a few more and end up with spaghetti for a week. Think for a minute about seven packages of noodles… Okay, that’s long enough.

Although fairly unfamiliar with Julia’s kitchen, I found several large colanders and set them in the sink. I didn’t run, but walked fast to the basement where there were some large foil catering pans in storage. By this time I figured the first pot might be done cooking and need to be tested. I tasted them, and these were done but might have had a slight burned flavor? It wasn’t bad, so in spite of a few dark noodles coming to the surface now and then, I gave them the green light and poured them into the two colanders and started rinsing. While not always necessary, in this case rinsing was needed.

The majority of the noodles were fine, although I had to cut out clumps that had welded together and refused to separate. I had to do a little surgery getting the final layer out of the pot too, leaving the parts that were stuck to the pot. I split the burn flavored ones between the two pans and lubricated them with olive oil and a large jar of sauce. I repeated the process with the second pot of noodles which were not burned, so each pan had both flavors to kind of keep people guessing. More sauce, parmesan cheese, and voila, spaghetti dinner for 30!!

Julia came home early from work and took the spaghetti and bread down to the church to be heated and consumed. For her, it was another night away from home until 8 pm. As it turned out, there was nearly a full pan of leftovers for us to eat – see what I told you about having spaghetti for a week? It happened. Thankfully, a miracle occurred somewhere in there and it actually tasted pretty good. It’s just another story of crazy blessedness at Gwennie Ru’s house…