What was supposed to be a relatively simple surgery (as simple as heart surgery can be anyway) turned out to be anything but. After they opened him up, they realized that things were not what they thought. His hole was quite large. They were expecting it to be small to moderate. He's been monitored since birth with echocardiograms and x-rays, but somehow the cardiologists still thought the hole was fairly small. I'm not sure if I'm explaining this all correctly, but he also has two valves right next to each other. Usually there is one valve on each ventricle, but his are both on one ventricle. Again, this was somehow never detected beforehand. His hole is right in between these two valves. There is supposed to be muscle/tissue in between the valves. But since there was no tissue between them, they really had nothing to attach the patch to.
The heart-lung machine doctor, George, said that they had to go ahead and lower Nicholas's body temperature to 74 so they could have more time. They had to come up with a new game plan on the fly while Nicholas waited. George said it's a good thing we have the surgeons that we do. They have 50 years of combined experience so were able to quickly come up with a solution. He said many less experienced surgeons may have had to close Nicholas back up without doing the surgery at that time.
So they were able to put the patch in place. They had to sew it in very close to the surface. They were afraid of causing an obstruction with one of the valves, but they've tested that and it looks good so far. I am a bit worried that somehow the patch will come loose since they had to just barely sew it in there (or so they made it sound), but maybe that is not possible. Let's hope not.
Because the surgery was a lot more major than they (and we!) expected, they've now said he will probably be in the hospital for 7 or 8 days. I'm glad they are being so careful though, so even though I'd love to have him home with me, I'm not going to complain. This will be somewhat difficult on Luke though. I went home for about 30 minutes today to see him and he seemed pretty upset at me, so I know he is having a hard time. They said he can come up for a short time to visit Nicholas in the ICU, so we plan to bring him by tomorrow afternoon. I'm just thankful we have family and friends that are willing to help us out during this time because we need it.
Here is Nicholas right before he went back for his surgery. I love the little gown on him!
Here he is right after the surgery.
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