Austin & Aiden: Surgery Update

On the day of Ausin's surgery, we arrived at Children's Medical City of Dallas at 6:15am and they took us back to the surgery area at 6:45am. They prepped him and got him all ready and then we waited for an hour and a half for the anesthesiologist to show up. Turns out that lectures are on Thursdays, and he was running a bit late. GRRR! Austin was such a good boy the entire morning, despite being extremely tired and hungry. He even had a little energy to flirt with his nurse, who was wearing a very colorful surgery cap. :)

They finally took Austin to the cath lab to work their magic. We were so nervous when they took him away, but we found a spot right outside the cath lab to setup camp and anxiously await the news. We were struggling to come up with small talk to pass the time when a women came up and sat on a chair beside us. We got to talking with her and found out that her daughter was having the same procedure done as Austin. She told us that her daughter caught a virus in her heart two years ago and had to have a heart transplant. She will need this procedure done every year for the rest of her life in order to test the heart tissue to ensure that her body isn't rejecting the heart. The little girl is only 9 years old. She was such a nice woman with a wonderful attitude. We couldn't have asked for a more pleasant distraction to our wait. After about an hour and a half or so, the surgeon (Dr. Clapp) came and told us that the surgery went great.

They brought Austin to the first recovery room where they were constantly monitoring him, while waiting for the anesthesia to wear off. He had a small incident where he started to bleed from the artery they went through in the groin area, but they were able to get it under control and stop the bleeding. After about an hour, they allowed us to go back there and see him. He was still pretty out of it, but he was able to suck down a bottle of glucose water pretty quickly. After they verified that all was good, they moved him to a different room.

When we got there, we were talking to the nurse about what we could expect and she gave us a little run down and some of the things she said implied that he would be spending the night. Well, the surgeon had just told us that he should be able to go home around 3pm that day. So, needless to say, we were a bit confused and asked her to verify with Dr. Clapp. An hour later, Dr. Clapp came up and told us that she never put an order for him to stay overnight, but she also said that she "didn't not" put one in either. Apparantly they had just implemented a new computer program and someone didn't know how to use it yet. :) She put the discharge orders in and we were out of the hopital at 4pm that day. Very long and exhausting day, but we are happy it is behind us. We have a follow-up appointment with Dr. Wright on December 16th for an echo to check his left pulmonary artery and descending aorta. They will also check to be sure that the device is still in the proper position and that the flow through his arteries is normal.

The next day, Austin was one happy boy. There are very few days that both mommy and daddy are home together so he was just eating it up. He was smiling the whole day except when he started to get tired. If there was any pain, he didn't show any signs. The next couple days, same thing, happiness.