We are HOME!!

I will post more when I get a chance, Alena needs me still quite a bit and its late tonight. But we just got home tonight!!

Tomarrow should...really.... be the day.... for real!

First off thanks to my parents for first of all having my dad come out and offer his help even though with the cancelled and rescheduled surgery he was unable to stay until her surgery date and for donating a bit of money to us to help with the extra expenses incurred by staying longer. I want to also thanks to the P family for their donation. 

Alena's rescheduled surgery is scheduled for tomorrow at 7:30 surgery start time. We are supposed to get to the hospital about "6-6:30" as the guy said (yeah couldn't be more specific I guess. We are planning on getting there at 6 just to be on the safe side. Such a early start time means that Alena is the first case of the day and should get a room (hopefully) and not have so much drama. It also means for us that she has more time to become stable before visiting hours (for Teague at least) are over. She has been telling us that she is scared of the "hurt" and "sad" but that she is ready to be all done. Oddly enough she seems quite ready and willing to get it over with, she's such an amazingly brave little human being!!


On the subject of the delay, I did talk to a social worker at the hospital on Friday and they said that they would cover the hotel expenses for us for the weekend (tremendously helpful). Tomorrow we are changing hotels to a cheaper hotel we have found as well as Alena's surgery. In a way it was nice to be able to be together as a whole, happy family for father's day and for my birthday (today) even though it meant being delayed. I hope everyone else had a wonderful Father's day yesterday (I know we had fun riding a train into San Fran for some fun.) I will more than likely post an update tomorrow at the end of the day but until then please feel free to add yourself to the Facebook group by the same name.

Update on Alena.... and the hospital...

So just after I posted this morning about today being the day it turns out that today is really not the day. I got a phone call from the hospital this morning saying that they had to cancel due to not having a bed available in the CVICU (cardio-vascular intensive care unit). They said that Dr. Hanley would still be able to do the surgery but that we would have to wait until Tuesday. The only good news in this is that she will be the first case on Tuesday, so there should be a room available. We talked to a social worker this morning as well who is going to make sure we are in a good number at the Ronald McDonald House as well. Supposedly the hospital is going to help us with accomodations but this extra four day stay is a unexpected expense and we are asking for any more help anyone can offer. We do have a Paypal link on the side of the page if you feel so inclined. Thank you so much for keeping Alena in your thoughts and minds throughout our ordeal and hopefully we will see Alena go in for surgery on Tuesday and come out surpassing all expectations (in a good way) that the doctors and surgeons have for her.


Mary

Today is the day!

So we have had a little but of fun this week. We went to the beach and rode a cable car which was nice to do before Alena's surgery. Yesterday we went to do our pre op testing at the hospital which included meeting dr Hanley and the PA and nurse assistant for the anesthesiologist. We also had a echo, EKG, chest X-rays, urine sample (I bet you can guess how fun that was), and blood work ( which Alena was so tired by then she just slept through it). Then we met with child life specialists who took us on the tour of the hospital be showed us all the facilities as well as giving Alena a medical doll to play with ( it comes with the electrodes nd IV, as well as pulse ox, chest tubes and a bandaid). Alena is scheduled for surgery at 12 noon today and says she is scared but ready to be all done. I think we all agree with her. My dad flew in this week also and is going to be a tremendous help to Teague in helping him be distracted. I want to close this by saying that unfortunately we found out we are going to be here longer then expected 7-10 days versus our expected 3-6 days. If you are willing/wanting to donate Marriott points or are willing to donate money via PayPal please feel free to do so. Also you may email me privately at Mary @ lynchco.net ( without the spaces). Thank you for all of your well wishes and positive thoughts for today.

Tomorrow we leave!

First of all thank you to the people who are continuing to show a their wonderful support of Alena in all ways (be it monetary or just happy wishes): to the B family, to the O and J family (heh... you know who you are!!), the K family, the H family and the J family (for your troubles;) ). Also thank you to Hissyfits consignment shop for just being plain awesome and getting so much money for our stuff! Altogether now including consignment shops, Craigslist sales, eBay sales, and straight up donations we have raised $2917.00 and wow... I'm really impressed. We also raised enough points through Marriott for us to be able to stay for 5 nights for free!!

Our only kink now is that apparently Stanford University has their graduation the day before Alena's scheduled surgery and hotel rates are skyrocketing because of this. Luckily we got the Marriott points to stay for five nights BUT we will still be spending the same amount of money on a hotel even though its for a shorter period of time. I also heard from the Ronald McDonald House associated with Stanford's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and they are running at full capacity and do not see availability for us since they have so many long term patients. This is something we can overcome especially with the outstanding amount of money/points we have accumulated! Like I have said before feel free to continue to donate if you want to, any moneys we receive above the amount we need for our stay will be going towards a local charity for children with Congenital Heart Defects. Oh and hey, here's a little fact for you too: 1 in 150 children is born with some variation of a congenital heart defect.

So our flight leaves for Palo Alto tomorrow at 7.25 pm, we need to get to the airport at 5.30 and we need to leave the house by 4 to make that happen. We wont arrive in Oakland until 9.30 and then it will be another hour after we pick up the rental car and get situated. I think we should arrive at the hotel about 11:30 to midnight. That's a really long evening! We are really close to being fully packed and are going to finish up in the morning. Wish us luck in our travel day and I will keep everyone updated, I'm also going to try to take some pictures to share with you guys of the things we are doing with Alena and her hospital stay journey as well. Remember to join our Facebook group for more up to date information regarding Alena and her hospital stay.

Fundraising update.

Over the weekend we received a few donations, so let me thank those people first. Thank you to the T.S. and D.S. families as well as the B family for their donations to our trip!

We are leaving late late Sunday night and starting to get anxious about the trip... I wish it was just here already and we could get it over with but it will get here when it does.

We now have 92k points in the account for Alena's Marriott Reward account which will last us for 5 nights which is amazing!! Right now its looking like we will have to change hotels in the middle of our trip (Marriott is more expensive then some of the surrounding hotels but the points get us in for free) but that is OK!! More points are more than welcome though!! Find info here for donating your points: http://alenasbrokenheart.blogspot.com/2012/05/wanna-get-to-know-alena-and-find-new.html

We have also raised $2,431 which is amazing!! At this point I think we will have most of our expenses covered now!! If you still want to donate please feel free as it will only give us some more security for unexpected expenses that we may  incur since we don't exactly know how long we will be there, we will also be donating the excess moneys that we did not need to a local Congenital Heart Defect organization that helps out families in need during their time in the hospital. (I haven't decided which one, I will choose when/if we are done needing the donations for surgery and are back home again.)

Getting Closer!!

So sweet when she sleeps

So first I need to thank the beautiful people for their wonderful support of Alena so far, the Q family, the A family, the P family, the G family, and the K family! We appreciate everyone's support of Alena!!


So we are getting closer to Alena's surgery and to our goal! Our flight leaves late late late on the 10th, we wont get to our hotel until about 11:30 or midnight. Alena has a day or two to relax and get used to the climate (and make sure she didn't get sick on the airplane and yes we probably will look at a redwood or two, ya gotta have some sort of fun before the big day). Then she has a day to tour the hospital on the 13th and the 14th she has pre-op procedures (aka echocardiagram, x-rays of her chest and neck, labs, meeting Dr. Hanley (our surgeon)). They expect that to last most of the day and then Friday the 15th is our big day for the Heart surgery. We don't know what time it will start but I will keep everyone updated on that as well as everything else!


 Our goal is 3000 dollars to raise and we have raised $2,129 which is wonderful but it isn't quite there yet. We also have 52k points in the account (more promised but I'm not counting them till I can see them) to use at the hotel at 20k points per night. The Blog has now had over 1,000 page views which is wonderful!! I have a PayPal donate button located on the side of the page (not on your iPhone you have to go to the full desktop page view), if you would like to donate any amount of money even just 1 dollar would help us tremendously. If each person who has visited this page donated 1 dollar we'd get a lot closer to our goal, and if every person who visited this page blogged or linked or Facebook'd the page then we might actually meet our goal!! I will keep everyone updated on things as they progress, please consider donating 1/4 of your daily coffee to Alena's heart surgery trip (aka $1.00) and lets see how far we can get this.

Remember anything above and beyond our needs in CA is going to go towards one of the local funds for Heart conditions


A friend of ours Amanda has offered to make these cute little pillows for $10 for the first and $8 for any additional with $3 going towards Alena's fund (all of the profits). Here is her short blog post about it .

If your interested in purchasing one you can email Amanda HERE with letter, boy/girl/gender neutral and solid/theme and she will get back to you with fabric options. She expects turn around time to be 5 days for pick up (North Phoenix area)or 7 days to ship. Shipping is $3 per letter.

 

Thank you yet again for everyone's continued support!