The surgery is behind us!

Well we've past another mile stone. Alistair went into surgery Saturday at 9am and 4 hours later he was back in the NICU. Dr Skarsgard attempted to perform the surgery doing a keyhole thoractomy(small whole in chest). The bowel and stomach were able to be brought down through the hole in the diaphragm using this procedure but it was too difficult to fix the hole appropriately so they had to make an incision across his lower left abdmonen. Now he'll have a good man scar to brag about down the road. The great thing is they didn't need to put a patch in to repair the hole, they were able to suture it closed. This is great as the reoccurence rate of the hole opening again decreases substantially. Alistair stayed amazingly stable all day yesterday. However, later this afternoon he started to deal with pulmonary hypertension.( His blood vessels in his lungs are constricted making it hard for his heart to push the blood through and get it oxygenated) He also is having problems with his heart shunting blood through the PDA (an area that usually closes at birth in the heart but was purposefully kept open for the time being in Alistair to relieve pressure in the right ventricle) causing systemic blood to be less oxygenated. He also has high CO2 levels. Anyhow he has been put on nitric oxide, a inhaled med that helps dialate his lung vessels which should hopefully help his blood be better oxygenated. The hardest part though today was they put him on a oscillatory ventilator. So same idea as a ventilator machine but this one visually shakes Alistair significantly in his little bed and this visual part was really difficult for me to take. Its hard to stand and only beable to lay my hand on his head or foot. I just want to lay him on my chest and hold him. His whole body shakes as it is a whole different process of ventilation in which the breaths are 400-900 per minute. Basically they are using this method to acquire better ventilation and less trauma to his lungs.

I finally got discharged from the hospital today which is nice but i did like having the ability to run down the stairs for a quick hello to my little guy. The nice thing is I can call the nursery any time and talk to his nurse 24/7 which I have been doing and they are so good at providing a clear update on Alistairs situation. He is still in a private room with a one on one nurse and they plan to keep him there until they have stabilized him.

Well I had every intention to post pictures today but I left my camera in the NICU today so perhaps tomorrow.

Chat again soon.
Cheers Julie