Friday, June 24, 2011

2 Bumps in the Road, but a Good Night

Vivian was brought back to us, in the Pediatric ICU (PICU) at 9:00 last night. We already knew about the first bump in the road, which was that her VSD patch had to be reopened because the pressure in her right ventricle was too high. We talked with the surgeon and he said that he removed about half of the patch, because it would have taken longer to remove more and they wanted to get done as quickly as possible and have a very, very small chance of needing to put her on bypass a third time. Looking longer term, we now have to wait for months or even years to see how her body responds once the effects of the surgery (especially the bypass) wear off and whether the pressures in her heart will adapt and allow the VSD to be closed.

The second bump in the road is that when they closed her up the pressure in her chest was too high, due to being open for 11 hours and on the bypass machine for about 6 hours. They therefore left her chest open (which is not uncommon with infants or very small children like Vivian) and it will probably get closed in about 3 days. This means a longer stay in the PICU and probably a longer overall stay in the hospital.

Vivian did have a good night and has remained stable throughout. The medical staff is confident about her recovery from the surgery.

We are amazed by our little battler and praise God for placing her in our lives.

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