FURTHER EXPLANATION....

Sometimes explaining things in this blog helps me make sure I fully understand what is told to me. Dr. O'Brien is still in surgery so part of the cardiac team came to talk to me. They were told by my sweet nurse that they needed to before the end of the day. This is what they said. Again, Dr. R found a small hole in the stitching of the patch that was used to close Cooper's VSD. This type of thing happens but most often after a few months and therefore tissue and blood cells have built up around the stitching so when this happens the hole is closed up anyway. The hole is approximately 4mm. They believe Cooper's occurred simply because of the substantial pressure he has encountered in the past few days while his heart tried to pump blood into his somewhat restricted pulmonary arteries. So if they were to view this problem as it is now and thought of it as a small VSD on an infant they would typically restrict, not stop, but restrict the blood flow to the pulmonary arteries. Then they would give it some time to see if it repairs itself or if further repairs would need to be made. In Cooper's case, if you remember, I have said that his pulmonary arteries are small and restricted. So in essence, what caused this problem is also what is temporarily fixing it. Now, there are several scenarios and Dr. O'Brien will be the one to make the final decision however they assured me that Dr. O'Brien made it perfectly clear early today that entering back into open heart surgery was not something he wanted to consider for Cooper at this time.

They have now sent orders to continue the weaning process. They have started turning down the ventilator again and lowered the meds they are trying to get him off of. Once again, I think this is good news. Now what I will have for you in the next two hours, only time will tell. Hahaha!