Got home from Seattle yesterday afternoon. Geeze, it feels good to be home. We spent nearly a week and a half with my inlaws in Oregon before going up (that part was already planned...the cath was just kind of stuck on to the end of our pre-planned trip), so by the time we got home, we'd been gone for 12 days. My mailbox runneth over.
Anyway, the cath went great. Brandt was first case, which meant showing up at 6:45, but going so early in the morning also meant that he didn't have time for his stomach to properly wake up and tell him he was hungry. Thank goodness, because that boy does hangry like no other. During the pre-op checklist, I was able to gleefully tell them that, despite having been around germs of some sort for the past two weeks, he didn't have any cold or flu symptoms! That was downright miraculous, especially as I had woken up the day before without a voice. Call me crazy, but I think God had a hand in that, because usually, Brandt is the first in our household to let us know that there are germs present.
I walked him back to the OR and held on to him as they gassed him...promptly decided I need some of that stuff for our next car ride. Then, of course, came the three hour wait. Shawna came by with donuts, which made the time considerably more enjoyable. After the cath, we got to talk to the doctor who had performed it, and the general consensus was that there still wasn't anything to fix. Go figure. They opened his stent as much as they could, but, because a stent shortens as its diameter expands, they're now working with something roughly the shape and strength of a wedding ring. Their plans to bust it open so his artery can continue to grow freely just aren't going to work. They'll remove it during his next OHS.
The AVM's that have been present since last December are, of course, still there. They occur when the lungs don't get the right enzymes from the liver, and since with the Glenn physiology the blood going to his lungs hasn't been to the liver, they won't be going away until something changes. That change is the Fontan. The Fontan physiology includes all the blood from the lower body/organs in the flow to the lungs, so it'll take care of the AVM's completely, as well as providing higher oxygenation and considerably less mixing of the red and blue blood.We haven't actually set a date yet, but talk currently is of February or March. I'm optimistic about the whole set-up, even though it's earlier than we had been planning. This has the potential to be the first surgery we are actually able to prepare for (unless, of course, Mr. Flair-For-Dramatics decides he wants to be life flighted out again). We'll be going out as a family this time, and the Ronald McDonald House isn't as busy in the winter as in the summer, so we'll probably be able to get a room without much difficulty. And as a major bonus, I won't have postpartum hormones to deal with this time. Or depression. Or anxiety. Or guilt for leaving Wade behind. I'm not saying it'll be an easy trip, but this time it seems that the odds are stacked more in our favor than against us. We'll plan to be there for at least a month, probably, and hopefully, we'll come home with a much pinker, happier, more energetic kiddo!
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