Evan – 3 Days Post Surgery
Today has been and continues to be a very big day for the little guy. It’s only been three days since his surgery and he’s doing so well. Here’s is a rundown of what has happened today.
- Chest tube removed
- Catheter removed
- Epinephrine stopped
- Dopamine stopped
- Down to lowest setting on milrinone
- Lasix (diuretic) continues to be dialed down, only every 6 hours instead of a constant drip.
- Lowered dosage of morphine (so he’s not so groggy and ‘lazy’ when it comes to breathing on his own)
- Respiratory therapist performed 2 ‘sprints’ on him last night in which he breaths on his own for an hour and the see how he does. He did great!
- At about 2:30pm this afternoon they removed him from the ventilator entirely and took the tube out of his throat!!! A very happy baby and parents.
- Tonight after 9PM we are going to attempt to bottle feed him. He has not had any food since midnight on Thursday.
We left the room for the removal of the vent tube in case there were any issues, we didn’t want to be in the way. We were told that he did very well and didn’t cry at all. The nurses said that he did manage a few dirty looks at them and the doctors. I think he gets that from his daddy.
Since he’s had the tube out he has been a much happier baby but I think that’s running thin. Now that the morphine continues to be pulled back he’s more alert and is certainly feeling hungry. He was awake and looking around for a good couple hours after the tube came out and full of dirty looks and silent cries.
He has been urinating and pooping all day and his stomach is finally looking closer to normal. The diuretics are certainly doing their job, the poor nurses had to change his bedding 3 times yesterday because the diaper was…. well… inadequate.
One of the cardiologist’s stopped by and asked if we had any questions and we nailed him with lots of questions about complete heart block, his current pacing, how long do they ‘wait and see,’ what the possible treatment options are if it doesn’t come back, etc. Evan is still in complete heart block as Sarah mentioned in yesterday’s post. No progress has been made on that front since the surgery. Hopefully the tissues will start communicating with each other over the next several days. They will continue to monitor him and if there’s still no progress after a couple of weeks then the only recourse would be another surgery and a pacemaker implanted in the space above his stomach. We’re hopeful that this will not need to happen but it is a known possible outcome for babies with l-TGA since the nerves of their heart are often in weird configurations because of the ventricles and arteries switching places during development.
All in all an excellent day for our little guy. Sarah and I are very confident that he’ll have no issues feeding tonight and we’ll be holding that beautiful boy in our arms again in no time.
