A Bit More Info

I'm going to try and get some sleep tonight, so perhaps if I post now I can crash on the couch without guilt. Andrew had a pretty good day today. His numbers were up and down, but relatively stable and mostly good.

While we didn't have a full family conference, we did speak briefly with the doctor. They still don't have a date for his surgery, but they know which surgeons will be doing it. They're going to focus on the lung first, then do the stomach valve surgery later...they don't want to open two incisions at once. They'll be removing only the upper lobe, and trying to leave the lower lobe (and associated blood vessels) completely intact.

Because they'll have to flip him over for the surgery (left side up), the doctors were concerned that his left lung could once again over-inflate and cause the right lung to collapse. They considered putting him back on ECMO before the surgery, so that they'd have a way to oxygenate him if his good lung collapsed. Fortunately, speaking with the surgeons, they have an alternative; they'll thread another tube down next to the current one, into the left bronchus (airway to the left lung), and then inflate a small balloon on the end. This will prevent the lung from hyperinflating. It's still possible that he could need ECMO again at some point, but that would only be if he had trouble self-oxygenating after the surgery. As long as the right lung works as they expect it to, that should be left as a just-in-case backup.

Once the surgery is complete, then they'll turn down the sedation and let Andrew wake up again. Until then, they're worried that he would hyperinflate his lung if he woke up. Being awake and letting him move will help with his swelling, promote good circulation, and allow him to be extra-cute again. As the "before," I'll post a couple of shots from this week. We'll ask more questions and get some more surgery information as soon as we have a meeting....they're trying to schedule some time with both the neonatalogist and the surgeon.

I'm not sure what our schedule's going to be like this weekend, so don't count on timely posts.