Stitches and Xrays

Owen is post op day 13. It's been a rough one. Owen had an appointment at Dr Pearl's office to get his stitches removed from her sternum. I knew that this was going to be a fight, because Owen has had enough! Dr P. is Owen's surgeon from Phoenix Children's who did his first two open heart surgeries when he was a little guy.

Dr P. was finishing up rounds at the hospital, so we got started with his PA. She looked at the stitches while dodging Owen's kung fu protective moves. All while I held him down on the table. I ended up calling Dr Hanley's office at Stanford to figure out where these stitches were anchored and where to pull from. I handed the phone to Dr. P's PA and I heard .. "clean the area well with iodine".. "cut sutures close to the skin".. "pull fast".. "it'll only feel weird, not too painful"... "it is one big stitch and it is anchored to itself, inside his chest."

As soon as she got off the phone, I said "we'll wait for Dr P." He had just walked into the office.. what timing. We caught up briefly and got Owen on the table. I pinned him down and sang "Twinkle Twinkle".. man he's going to hate that song now.. and Dr Pearl cut and pulled. Owen's back arched in pain and then we were done. That was brutal!! He was in his stroller within seconds.. his happy place.

Dr. P and I caught up on surgeries and he asked if Owen would be having his Fontan at PCH. I told him I was nervous to do it anywhere besides Stanford because if something went wrong, we have a great transplant team there to take over. As of 2010, there is a pediatric transplant program in Phoenix, but it's too new. That scares me.

After we bolted out of Dr. P's office, we walked over to the hospital. We waited in admitting for an hour before going back to radiology. The chest xray went quick and Owen says "cheeessseee" to the machine. He said his "heart happy!" Good to hear!

The big white cloudy part that takes up the majority of his chest is his heart. Below that is his tummy.
I love the side view because you can see the wires holding his sternum shut.

Here is a chest shot of Owen after the stitches were removed. I swear I give him baths all the time, but he still looks so icky. Lots of goobers and sticky stuff that he won't let me wipe off.

On the way home, I called our NP at Stanford to give her a little update and to figure out our next plan of action. She said Dr Rosenthal wants to see Owen in the next 4 to 6 months to discuss the Fontan. Until then, they want all echos sent over from Dr Stock.. our next one is on Tuesday.

I told her that we'd like to come back to Stanford in about 4 months (end of June/early July) to do a pre-op workup. She's pretty sure they'll want to do a cardiac cath and we'll meet with Dr R and Dr Hanley at that time to make the best decision. Then we can schedule surgery for a month from then. She said that was a great idea. I'm full of them. :) She'll get back to me next week and we'll set the dates.

Owen has been fairly happy. Tired. Weak. Not doing much physically. I have to keep reminding myself that he only had open heart surgery 13 days ago. He just look so great!

This is his newest face that he started making while in the hospital. As if closing his eyes will make us all go away. I suppose it sometimes works. He's off in dreamland right now and I just hope he's not dreaming of his mommy holding him down and singing "twinkle twinkle" to him. Poor guy.

I have an update on our favorite little girl soon. She has been such a champ through all this! Owen has been moody and she just goes along with it. She hasn't had a whole lot of homework lately so she's been getting lots of chill time. She has no extracurricular activities right now and she prefers it that way. I'm not a fan of overloading your kids with extra activities, but one or two is healthy. She's been asking to do karate and cheer of all things. Spring break is almost here (where did the year go?) and so we'll do some trial classes and figure out what she wants to do.

I should probably go do a load of laundry or rotate the dishes so that I can say I did something around the house today. Thanks for all your feeding advice in the last post. We do have a feeding pump that I love to use at night but during the day, it's nice to not be attatched to anything. Except for oxygen of course. I am going to take it really slow and just increase volume. Slow and steady wins the race!