Biopsy #9

Whoa... I am exhausted. We escaped the desert heat and headed to Pinetop for the first weekend in July.  It was wonderful and I'll do a post about that tomorrow.  Unfortunately, we had to fly out on the 4th of July to be ready for a first case biopsy on the 5th in Palo Alto.  Owen was thinking he would miss all the firework shows and was pretty bummed.  As we were landing in San Jose, we saw every firework show for miles.  It got better as we were driving into Palo Alto because we caught the finale of the Great America theme park show.   It was all pretty amazing!

 

Owen headed back to the cath lab by 8:30 and was out really fast.  The plan was to measure the pressures in his SVC narrowing and possibly intervene and we planned to recover in the short stay unit.  I was surprised when he was done so quickly.  The cath team and the transplant team were slammed and we waited in the PACU post biopsy (and echo) for a long time.  We finally were discharged from the PACU and headed up to the heart center to see our team in clinic.  Owen's pressures looked great but they didn't do anything with the SVC...communication error or oversight.  So we will tackle that next month.  He did get a massive "hickey" as the nurses and I called it (broken capillaries from a reaction to the surgical tape) and then he asked "what's a hickey?"  Crickets...

 

Owen's labs looked great, aside from his liver function, which shows his ALT and ASTs very elevated. Our favorite pharmacist looked at all of his meds with the team and the only thing we can come up with is when he started Asprin a few weeks ago (due to the SVC narrowing), we started seeing things elevate.  So we'll drop a couple meds and do a liver/gallbladder ultrasound early next week with follow up labs.  It's always something going on with this guy. 

 

The best news was ZERO REJECTION!  His heart is happy and all of the other things we will work through.  His appetite is getting better and he's gaining a little weight (up to 51lbs) and is growing (50.5"). 

 

We spent the night in Palo Alto and headed home this morning.  It's nice to be home and we have a busy weekend planned.  Stay tuned..