One Week After Surgery

Well it has been one week since Caelin got his initial surgery. At this point the doctors hoped to have him extubated and his chest tube out but since Monday's incident, Caelin's little body just isn't there yet. Thankfully he is back on track to recovering with good stats but at a little bit of a slower pace than before. He had an overall good night last night. His chest X-ray revealed his right lung is partially collapsed. So today the respiratory specialist has been coming in every 2-4 hours to do a little bit of therapy to try to work out the mucus plug (what they believe to be the cause of the partial collapse). Since the therapy, they have suctioned his lungs and has quite a bit of excretions including some yellow mucus. He will have another chest X-ray over night and hopefully it will show the lung recovered an no longer collapsed.

A physical therapist also stopped in today to introduce herself, explain what she does, and to assess Cael. At Cael's age she checks to make sure he is moving appropriately and is positioned well to allow for movement. She said Caelin seems to be doing well and she will continue to visit sporadically.

After Monday's incident, Caelin was on Nitric Oxide mixed with Oxygen. The nitric oxide reduces pulmonary artery (blood) pressure and vasodilates the blood vessels. They saw his improvement and concluded he no longer needed it, so they weaned him off it completely. Typically they need to raise the oxygen level when they wean the Nitric Oxide but they did not have to do this with Cealin- his stats stayed high. In fact, later this afternoon they lowered his oxygen to 50% but the respiratory rate has remained at 28, which is good because although he initiates most of his breaths, he still relies on the machine for some.

Caelin will be getting another echocardiogram tomorrow to check the function of his shunt and for the cardiologists and surgeon to further discuss the possibility of Cael getting a stint to reinforce the shunt. Yesterday, one of the cardiologists said the echo shows a little bit of tapered blood flow at the end of the shunt which causes some concern about its long-term stability. He said it looks great for short term and it is doing its job now, he is just not sure how long it will hold out and if it will make it to his next surgery (around 4-6 months of age). So after the echo tomorrow they are going to discuss taking him into the cath lab to get a picture of the shunt and make a decision. The cardiologists said this would most likely take place early next week because they want his chest to heal; however, when we spoke with the surgeon, Dr. Quintessenza, and he did not like the idea of waiting because Caelin would have to remain intubated until after he has recovered from the stint being placed. The surgeon feels like this is too long for Cael to be intubated so he said he would speak with the cardiologists and they would all get back to us. We have had no updates since then but hopefully we will get more information in the morning.

Again, thank you. Caelin is able to heal not only because of his strong, resilient personality but because of all your continued positive energy, thoughts, prayers, and more! We love you.