On the Fence

Our trip to the cardiologist today confirmed this delightful fact: 2010 will be the first year of Olive's life without open heart surgery!

We are grateful to so many of you for your prayers, good thoughts, and encouraging words. For six months we have been "watching & waiting" for this followup appointment -- and one of three possible bits of news. We received the best of the choices - which is that we will check again in 6 months. As expected, the constriction in Olive's implanted artery remains. Dr. Long explained it this way: "She is walking a fence that we are not comfortable with. I had expected to see her on the wrong side of the fence at this visit -- it turns out, she is still sitting on the fence."

While we would prefer that she not be anywhere near the damn fence -- sitting on it is better than climbing over. The six months we have been given will bring us just before Olive's 3rd birthday. She will be bigger, stronger, and even healthier than she already is. We will prepare ourselves during these months for whatever phase we enter next.

I know I say this all the time, but thanks for the prayers. We don't believe that praying is like playing the lottery; afterall, there's no lucky ticket and whomever has the most doesn't necessarily win. What we do believe is that God is honored by the process.

We want our lives to honor God - and we want our girl's life to do the same.

We're thankful for the thoughts & well wishes from our friends who are atheists, agnostics, and practioners of any number of faiths. For us, your love communicates the universal and the sublime. It is awe inspiring and humbling to be the recipients of great care.

Now we wait another six months for our next bit of news. We may discover that the summer brings another open heart surgery. We may discover that we have more time for our girl to grow before we cross that bridge again. The bottom line is that we aren't in charge of either of those outcomes. We are in charge of pouring out ridiculous love on the sweetest girl we know -- so we will move forward with that plan and find a million reasons to be thankful for this day --- and the next.

With Love & Gratitude,

Katie