Learning about David’s first hours

Yesterday I met the lady who performed David’s echocardiograms in the operating room shortly after birth, and she told me a lot more details about what it was like in there. David just went in for his MRI, so I figured I might as well document it now. The fact that she performs so many echos and remembers so many details about that day and remembered who he was, shows just how unique his situation is. 

She detailed some things that we knew and added more details that we did not know. Adam and I did not think David would make it out of the operating room alive, so we made sure the team in my operating room knew that we wanted to see David briefly before he was escorted to the operating room next door. His first hour was critical.

In his operating room, there were at least 30 people in there between all the different teams – such as the surgery team, the cath team, the NICU team, etc. She said David’s septum was so restrictive and his left ventricle was so small, that his initial echo needed to put a probe down his esophagus to properly see the heart. She noted that it was good that there was a plan in place and his heart condition was known, because otherwise, he would not have survived his first hour. His oxygen saturation was in the 30s when he arrived in the room and the cath doctors worked diligently to get that septum opened. Once they got it opened up, she said his oxygen saturation immediately jumped up to 90%. That’s a little higher than they’d like (currently, they try to keep David’s oxygen levels between 75-85%), but it was much improvement, and everyone was happy when those numbers rose. After that procedure, she said she was able to use the regular probe outside his body for the rest of his echos. 

She then told me about the plugs they tried to place to better control the amount of blood flow to the lungs versus the rest of the body. I think she said they tried to place about 4 different plugs, and kept pulling them out due to being the wrong size for his body before finding one that was a good fit. These plugs are not conventional and not typically used for this purpose, but you use what works, and if it would allow him to not need surgery until a much later point, it was worth it. She said that these plugs have been used successfully on animals in the lab who have been born with congenital heart defects, and we’ve been told it has been used sometimes on humans as well, but it’s not super common as of yet. Ultimately, they all ended up being removed when his body said it wasn’t ready for them, and he had the pulmonary bands placed via surgery a couple days later when it was ready. She then said she was glad that they were able to stent the ductus open during this time as well. That probably saved another surgery as well. 

It was an interesting story to hear. We got updates throughout the surgery about his status, but not as many details as she provided.