Hi everyone,

Well, we got to Boston on Sunday, and Natalie was admitted yesterday. She was just taken into surgery at 10:00, and she was sedated. They did an echo, and that was completed a short time ago. She just went into surgery. Today, they will be performing surgery via a catheter inserted into the femoral artery. So, they will not be opening her chest up again, yet. They will attempt to make a hole in her left ventricle. The purpose of this is to force more blood flow into the ventricle, thereby hopefully causing the ventricle to grow to the point where it can be a functioning part of the heart in the long term. This way, she’ll end up with a fully functioning, two ventricle heart.

We will not know if this was successful for several weeks or more. We will continue to monitor on a weekly basis in Bismarck, and the information will be relayed to Boston. There will be at least two more surgeries even in the best of scenarios, so there is still quite a journey ahead for Natalie. We will continue to pray, and we appreciate all of you who are doing the same.

I’m not as eloquent as Heidi, I’m a little more brief in my writing. So, there’s the short, to the point synopsis so far. I’m sure Heidi will have a better, more creative post later today. Stay tuned, and again, thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. We truly appreciate all of you.