"What we share together will live much longer than we do..."

Like I stated in part one of Bentley's  heart journey, I am not confident in my writing abilities, especially when it comes to more technical writing. But I am going to do my best to explain to the best of my abilities what we have gone through this last couple years with Bentley's heart. Our Journey to have this surgery has been a rocky one. It took us a little over a year to prepare for this final surgery. Including making sure that Bentleys dental work was done and that he have no cavities or infection. The dental work he had before his first surgery was not done very well. They had drilled really close to one of his nerves in his front tooth, and only did half a root canal on his second... I can't blame them because of the v-fib he had gone into. BUT that did make our life a little more difficult. We had to carefully watch his teeth to make sure that an infection didn't happen. He made it the first six months and was able to have his second surgery. But at our de...

Congenitally Corrected Transposition of the Great Arteries. I have been trying for a while to write this. First because I am not good with technical writing and second because I don't always feel like I understand everything. When I do try to read up and understand it better I get overwhelmed, but I will do my best to put it here. Bentley has a unique heart. He has what is called Congenitally corrected Transposition of the Great Arteries. Only .5% of people with a heart defect have this. Which is about 5000 people in the United States. And along with that each case is different. In the heart you have two ventricles that pump blood. The left ventricle, which is the stronger ventricle, pumps blood to the entire body. While the right ventricle pumps blood to the lungs. The two ventricles pump the blood through two main arteries. The aorta and the pulmonary artery. CCTGA occurs in the womb while the heart is still developing and what happens is the left and right Ventricles tw...

First of all, I feel so extremely blessed for all the messages and texts that I have received the last week! It brought so much comfort knowing Bentley had so many people rooting and Praying for him! The day of surgery and the days following were scary and emotional and don’t even know if I can explain how hard it was for Alex and I. But we made it! And  Bentley had a great day today! Today we were able to take out so many tubes and a couple of IVs and he was able to have Jello and Mac and cheese. He even had a visit from Hadley and Grandma and Grandpa which brought some smiles out😊 We still have a long road to recovery, and  we are still in the ICU, but we are just taking it one day at a time. He has been so strong and Brave and I couldn’t be more proud to be his mom♥️ I know it’s hard now, but it’s not the end, I will eventually post an update about his heart and the surgery. But I’ve been running on very little sleep and hope to get some rest tonight. Love Always 💕...

I know I have been scarce on here the last six months. Lots has happened and I have been a little overwhelmed with everything.  Lots of Doctors and Dentist appointments for Bentley. His heart looks great and it is strong enough for the double switch surgery. That surgery was originally scheduled for June 4th but there was an opening in the surgeons schedule and they moved  Bentley Up. So it is happening tomorrow morning. We could use all the prayers and good thoughts our way. The surgery is 6-8 hours long and his recovery is 2-3 weeks in the hospital. He’s such a strong happy, energized 5 year old. We love him so much! I’ll try to give an update after the surgery and hopefully I will eventually post a post with more details of what’s been going on. Love Always ♥️ The Richards Family

Happy 2019! We are excited for the new year! Looking back I see the hardships and trials, but I also see all the miracles and tender mercies. I am going to try harder to put family updates out once a month. More for my sake so I can have a record of what goes on in the family since I have an awful memory. But here is a little bit about our year. As a family: We took two family trips: -Phoenix in February so I could run the Phoenix 1/2 -Los Alamos in July to spend time with grandparents and cousins We also had lots of family come visit! We tried to do lots of fun things as a family and explore the places close to us. Alex: He has been keeping busy with work, he has been on 3 business trip (Southern California twice, once in Irvine and once in Pasadena, and Phoenix) He also got some new responsibilities with his Job, He had a birthday and turned 31 The clutch on his car Ron went out, but he hopes to fix it. And he does an awesome job taking care of us and bein...

Happy Thanksgiving!  We spent the day and ate our turkey at the hospital. Bentley is doing great and recovering quick. His heart still needs a little longer on the dopamine so we are still in the ICU. We will do another echo in the morning to see how it’s doing. But he’s doing great! We have so much to be grateful for today and everyday. We are missing Hadley but we are grateful that she too can be around family enjoying the Holiday with her cousins. Thanks for all the prayers and love. We are hoping to be home this weekend but don’t know for sure. We are just taking it day by day♥️ Happy Thanksgiving ♥️The Richards Family

Before I was able to update the blog about Bentley’s surgery it got moved up! Surgery was scheduled for November 28. Then on Wednesday of last week the surgeons office called and said they would need to move his surgery later date. However that had a last minute opening on Friday and asked if that would be enough time. We have already been waiting for a couple months so we said we could do Friday!  So here I am writing this on my phone from the hospital. 🙂 Let me back up a little bit. The week of November 3 Bentley had a series of tests and procedures to see if he would be a candidate for the double switch surgery. My awesome mother in law came out and took care of Hadley while we were in and out of the hospital that week.  He ended up not being a candidate yet, the pressure in his artery still needed to be a little higher before they would consider him a candidate,  so we proceeded with our previous plan of just tightening his PA Band.  When we found out ou...