The days after we got him home were good. He was eating really good and very active. He had a cardiologist appointment about a week after his surgery and all was great. They started him on potassium, because on of his medications he was on, "Lasix" got rid of the potassium in his body. Everything was going really good until about the second week in November. Timothy started throwing up and not eating as well. We took him to his pediatrician and they changed his formula to soy formula thinking that might be the cause. Nope, still things got worse. We took him back, and this time they told us he had thrush, an infection in his mouth and that he may have reflux. So we treated him for the thrush and still things weren't any better. I didn't know what to do. On November 30, 1999, he had a follow up appointment with one of his surgeons. His x-ray showed some pulmonary edema consistent with congestive heart failure. He told us that he wanted his cardiologist to look at him cause it could be that he just needed his medications adjusted. We set up an appointment with his cardiologist for the following Friday. But by the following Thursday, I knew something wasn't right with Timothy. His breathing was faster, he went from eating 4-5 oz every 3-4 hrs to barely 1/2 oz every 3-4 hrs, and sleeping alot. I didn't know what to do. Joe finally said enough, he called his cardiologist and told them what was going on. "Bring him in immediately", they said. All the way to the hospital I was scared to death. They did all the tests including and echocardigram, which showed the pressure in his heart was up. Ok, what did that mean? They told us that scar tissue had probably formed from his previous surgery and it was making blood flow from his lungs back to his heart very difficult. He would have to have another surgery. Our hearts broke! Only two month old and would have to go through all that pain again. They admitted him to UK hospital so that they could get his medications adjusted again and because he was in respiratory distress. He stayed at UK until Saturday, when they told us to go ahead and take him home, but on Monday December 13th, he would be admitted back to Kosairs Children's Hospital in Louisville.

On December 13th, we took Timothy back to Kosairs. Most of the day was spent with them running all the necessary tests for Timothy's surgery. He was stuck so many times, that I didn't think he would have any where left for then to put the IV's that were needed for surgery. Timothy's surgery was scheduled for the next day. Exactly two months after his first surgery, he was having his second. Timothy would be the second surgery this time. We spent the night his Timothy's room with him. The next morning we got up and got everything ready. About 12 PM they came and got us. Again we went to the waiting area with Timothy. We were told of all the risks again, then we again said good-bye to him and went to our waiting room.

About 1pm, Dr Austin came in and told us that he was ready to get started. He told us that this surgery would take longer, but he still had about a 90-95% chance of making it through the surgery. We were given updates about every hour again. At about 5 PM, Barbara, the assistant came in and told us that Dr. Austin was getting ready to freeze Timothy so that the circulation would stop in his body, so that he could get to the veins that he needed to work on. This scared us to death because we were told that he only had 30 minutes to do what he had to do, and get Timothy's blood circulating again. Luckily though the other surgeon who helped with Timothy's first surgery had just come back in to town when he heard that Dr. Austin was again working on Timothy. He came by to watch, but when Dr. Austin needed to put Timothy in circulatory arrest, Dr. Yea scrubbed in and helped. This way it could get done faster.

That was the longest 30 minutes of my life. They came back in about 6 PM and told us that they took him off the heart-lung machine and his heart started right back up. No problems there. But the pressure in the right side of the heart was really high. So they were going to stop his heart again and go in and make sure they opened up the opening where the pulmonary veins dumped back into the heart wide enough. I didn't know what to say or do.

All I could think about was my beautiful little boy lying on that operating table being cut on. About 9 PM that night Dr Austin and Dr Yea came in and told us that Timothy was doing fine but as we already knew the next few days would the most critical. We got to see Timothy about 10pm that night, and I don't know how we did it. He was laying there with tubes, wires and IVs all over him. Since he was still sedated and paralyzed, he looked dead. We decided to let him get some rest and we needed some too.