Off to Battle!!!

Our little Andrew goes in this Thursday for open heart surgery. He has a congenital heart defect named a "mitral valve cleft". Simply put, it is a whole in his mitral valve, the valve between the left ventricle and left atrium. The cleft/whole is large enough that it has caused his ventricle to enlarge faster than he is growing. So he'll get a sternotomy (saw open his sternum/breast bone), his heart and lungs will be stopped and he'll be put on a heart-lung machine. They'll make an incision into the atrium, sew the cleft together and then close everything on the way out. He should be in the hospital for about four days, hopefully coming home on Monday.