by This little man is giving MY heart a run for its money tonight.
He’s struggled today to maintain his oxygen levels and ended up having to go back to more support on the ventilator. His echo is showing a narrowing at both ends of his shunt that keeps blood flowing from his lungs now instead of just the one end, so the docs need to go in and get a better look at what’s going on. We should get to talk to cardiology tomorrow and will know more about when he will be scheduled to go in for a cath procedure later this week.
We talked today about the possibility of needing to go on ecmo – basically an external heart/lung machine, because if his shunt does close off somehow or continue to narrow before they can do something about it, it may be necessary to do that in order to a) keep him alive and b) perform the repairs needed. Going on and coming off of that machine present another series of risks as well.
The cath results may also indicate that it’s time to do his next surgery, which is earlier than we were anticipating since we were expecting that to be late February, early March.
Anyway. We may know more tomorrow after we get to talk to cardiology, but most likely we won’t know much until we get in and out of this cath procedure, which has been considered high risk as it is with the added complications of his Down’s syndrome and his clotting disorder.
So. Long story short, if you have a spare second or two, say an extra prayer for this little guy when you get a chance please. 💕
