Rounds 10:28am April 8th

The Doctors just came around for rounds...  Man is it hard to follow when they are doing their own things, throwing around a lot of numbers, abbreviations, acronyms, and stats.  Overall Owen is looking really good.  Right now Owen is actually having too much blood flowing to his lungs and not enough to the rest of his body, that is why the extubation failed last night, not that his lungs are too weak.  We talked to the cardiologist and got an explanation of why too much blood is going to his lungs and not enough to his body.  The shunt that they put in during surgery is actually too big for Owen right now (they do this on purpose).  Because the shunt is plastic and will not grow with Owen, they put in a larger shunt than is absolutely necessary so that it can last for longer.  He will grow into the shunt and then eventually out grow the shunt and that is when they need to do the second surgery.  Until he grows into the shunt, they can control how much blood goes to his lungs and to his body by giving him different medications.  The next time they try to extubate him they are just going to have to modify his drug cocktail to better control the flow of blood through his body.  They have now decided (since they had to re-intubate Owen) that they are going to wait until tomorrow or Tuesday to remove Owen's heart lines and chest tubes.  It isn't necessarily that they don't think he could handle it, but it is still nice to have some form of intervention in the event that something does happen.  So we still won't be able to hold Owen today.  Darn it, Cassie and I have so been looking forward to getting to hold him today.