Pre Op

We had an early morning at the hospital for Pre Op. Owen was amazing!! He stood on the scale for her vitals for the first time ever. His weight was 31lbs and was 37.5" tall. His sats were perfect at 80% on 1 liter. His blood pressure was beautiful, not as low as it often is.

Owen was so chill during his 2 hour echo. We started getting worried when the tech took so long and we started asking a million questions. Apparently, he was playing with the new 3d echo images and was being thorough. The EKG tech came in afterwards and it was beautifully quick.

We made our way to radiology for chest xrays and Owen giggled the entire time. The radiologist was pretty silly and it only took a few minutes. Sweet.

Another appointment was scheduled at the Cardiology clinic to speak with the surgical team and anesthesiologists. We spent a couple hours in clinic because we had a lot to talk about. The short story...

Owen has surgery at 7:30 am tomorrow! He is the first case of the day and for that I am grateful! Surgery will last at least 4 hours, but probably longer.

Dr Hanley will put Owen on bypass and attempt to repair the valve. They will bring him off bypass, see how he does and do an echo. If it's not pretty, they will put him back on bypass and Dr Hanley will then replace the valve. It could be long.

We have until tomorrow to decide if we are going to want a pig valve or a mechanical valve placed. A pig valve has only a 5 to 10 yr lifespan. A mechanical valve lasts a lot longer. The major downside to the mechanical valve is that Owen will be place on Coumadin (a blood thinner) and I will have to poke him daily to check his levels. Levels too high or too low are not good. A pig valve doesn't have the same clotting risks as a mechanical valve so he will only continue on 1/2 asprin a day. Long term valve with clotting risks, or shorter term valve?? Our biggest question for Dr Hanley is "how long is his heart really going to keep working?" If we don't expect it to last another 10 years, then let's just go with the pig valve. In reality.. we still don't even know if he'll qualify for the Fontan in the next six months and we'll be moving forward with transplant. It's a big decision!

Owen is going to be on the vent for at least 48 hours after surgery. They hope to have his chest closed, but with his previous two open heart surgeries, he had too much swelling to close the sternum. This is major surgery and we are messing with the main valve delivering blood from his right atrium into his right ventricle. We also need to be extra cautious that he doesn't have heart arrhythmias or heart block. If he does, we'll be looking at placing a pace maker.

We are scared. We are hopeful. Owen says he's going to "rot it" (rock it) tomorrow!! I know he will.

Our last stop of the day, 6 hours after we arrived at the hospital, was to the lab. Owen had to get a big set of labs drawn and he was NOT happy. We were heartbroken as he said "pease..no.." when the lab tech poked him. They got it on the second prick.. but he was so sad. If there weren't bad enough, we had to stick a urine bag over his trunk and get a urine sample. We got it all done and hopefully didn't traumatize him long term.

It appears he recovered well...

Uncle Rustyn (Carson's brother) came down from San Fran to hang out with us today. We went for a walk around the hotel and now we are chilling in our room waiting to go to dinner. Owen loves seeing Uncle Rusty and we are enjoying our last night with him before surgery.
I'm off to cuddle my little man. We appreciate all your prayers! I will keep the blog updated tomorrow as often as I can. They said they rarely update while in the OR, so I'm sure I will be pacing the waiting area going crazy. Carson is going to move our stuff from the hotel to the Ronald McDonald house..we got a room!!

Owen.. you are our hero and we know you're going to do so great tomorrow!

Kamryn.. we miss you and love you baby!