Fun, Cardiology, and the dreaded Fontan
First… the FUN!
If you’re reading this and you live in the northern United States then you know what a dreadfully long, cold, and snowy winter it has been. In Michigan, we have had more snow and consecutive days below freezing this year than we have had in over 2 decades. When you can’t get out of the state for a nice warm vacation what can you do? How about a water park? Indoor of course. We got a group of friends together (12 adults and 8 kids ages ~2-4) and spent a weekend at Great Wolf Lodge in Traverse City. We all had a really great time, especially Evan.
And the not so fun…
Today Evan had a cardiology appointment here in Kalamazoo. The appointment went well despite how it made Sarah and I feel. It’s time to schedule his next surgery, the Fontan operation. We’ve known for over a year that this would be the spring/summer that it would happen but that didn’t change how it felt to hear the words from the cardiologist. She will be calling U of M and letting them know that he is ready and they will contact us to setup a heart catheterization and the operation. They say to plan for a 6 week hospital stay but it could be as little as a couple weeks depending on how quickly he recovers. I don’t know what the average stay is, I also know that this kid isn’t average. The operation is not urgent but we would like to get it over with and out of the way so that he can heal and enjoy the summer weather. We will let you know once we hear the final date. The rest of the appointment went well. His oxygen saturation was at about 80%, EKG looked normal, he’s 32 pounds (69th percentile for his age). They chose not to do an echo this time for a couple reasons, 1) they did an echo in December and don’t feel like it would have changed much and 2) U of M will be doing one soon anyway.
This is a depiction of what they will be doing. The picture isn’t a perfect representation because Evan’s anatomy is a little different but it’s close enough. The heart on the left is about where he is now, the one on the right is what it will be after the operation. In very basic terms, his current blood flow (after 2 operations), is that deoxygenated blood returning to the heart from the top half of his body has been redirected to his lungs while the bottom half of his body still drains into his heart and mixes with the oxygenated blood (hence the 80% oxygen saturation). The Fontan will complete his new plumbing by directing the bottom half of returning blood directly to the lungs.
