In the hospital today

Elijah just got out of his cath surgery and everything went well. My mind is a bit jumbled right now after experiencing a scary episode in his room so I am just calming down. We were trying to feed him post-op and he was still a little bit sedated and he kept forgetting to breathe. His oxygen sats dropped down to 10% and weren't coming back up. He started turning blue so we paged his dr back in and he got him breathing in some oxygen so he started remembering to breathe again. He seems to be doing much better and hopefully within 30 minutes should be back to normal and eating from a bottle (he's starving!!).

From what they found during the procedure, he is probably going to need a 2-stage surgery. One of the collaterals that is supplying his lungs with oxygenated blood is shaped in a big twisty S, so it's a bit difficult for the blood to flow freely through that path and that's why his levels have been gradually declining over the past few weeks. The first surgery will create a pathway that makes it much easier for blood to get around in his heart/body. The second surgery would be to fix the hole in his heart. Dr. Gremmels is going to try to consult with the surgeons here at Children's today to see if they feel confident doing the surgery themselves. He is also going to consult with the surgeon at Stanford to see what he thinks. Dr. G believes that the surgeons here will be able to do the surgery themselves, but we will hopefully hear from him later today to know for sure. It looks like Surgery #1 will take place within the next few weeks. Not sure when Surgery #2 will take place. The collaterals they will be doing surgery on are in tricky places in his body (near his spine/in his back) so this is going to be a pretty risky surgery regardless of where he goes. I think I might need sedation myself to be able to get through this. Today has been pretty rough for me and it really wasn't a huge procedure at all. The day started off badly, though, when three nurses poked him about 87 times trying to find a vein for an IV. He SCREAMED his lungs out and I had to leave the room.

We will hopefully get to go home this evening, assuming everything goes ok today. We will keep this site posted as best we can. Our computer at home is being fixed, so unless we're at the hospital, we don't have access to a computer for a few days.