Rollercoaster Day

This has definitely been the longest day of my life thus far.

Max's surgery went really well. The surgeon was done with the surgery in 4.5 hours and was able to successfully repair all of Max's heart defects. Steve and I felt a huge sense of relief. The staff here at Children's is really amazing. We were updated on the progress of the surgery 7 times throughout the 4.5 hours.

Max was moved into the Cardiac ICU around 1pm today. For the first several hours, he seemed to be doing really well. All of his stats were great and they were talking about getting him off of the ventilator by tomorrow. He was considered pretty stable.

Around 5:45 this evening, his blood pressure began to drop. They have been trying numerous things to get it back up. Right now as I am sitting here, it is low, but at an ok level. They believe this is going on because he had high resistance in his lungs to begin with and now his right ventricle is working really hard to pump blood properly. The right ventricle is getting tired and not pumping blood to the left ventricle correctly. (Due to being on the heart/lung bypass machine during surgery) We are hoping that the latest medication they gave him will help his right ventricle pump blood better and give his lungs a break. So right now we just sit and wait. At any given time there are 6 nurses, Cardiologists, fellowes, etc. by his bedside or within sight to monitor his blood pressure. It's both reassuring and terrifying at the same time.

What this means is that he definitely won't come off the ventilator for at least a couple of days. He will remain sedated until they feel like his blood pressure is high enough to breathe on his own. If the current medication does not continue to work, there are other medications they can try. One of which is Viagra!!!

Thank you so much for all the phone calls, texts, emails. It really makes this so much easier knowing that so many people are pulling for our sweet boy!

Love to you all,

Brittney & Steve