Owen's Cloud: Fontan Madness

This is going to be a longgg post, so bare with me. I was too exhausted to update the blog last night, so this morning I will include all of yesterday and this morning.

Yesterday.

Owen received an amazing video from Batman yesterday morning that we watched about 10 times before leaving for the hospital. He of course had to wear his batman costume to the hospital. We arrived at the hospital around 7:15 and went to the surgical floor of the hospital to get checked in and ready for surgery. Owen spent most of his time in the playroom and when he wasn't in there, he was very upset and uncomfortable with his surroundings. Kevin was allowed to take Owen back to the OR and stay with him until he was asleep.

We waited in the PICU family waiting area on the 4th floor while he was in surgery. They finally started operating around 10am. Before they can operate, they need to place all sorts of access lines in Owen. They placed an iv in Owen's right hand, an ART(arterial) line in his left hand(but had to move it to his right groin because it failed during surgery), and a central line. Before they closed Owen, they put in pacer wires(used to pace his heart if needed) and 3 chest tubes. Owen was on bypass for 94 minutes and his surgeon kept him open for a while to let him "dry" out before closing him up. Post-Fontan, you can have issues with drainage and it can keep you in the hospital for a while.

Once Owen was brought back to his room, we met with Dr. A and his nurse Kate and they said he did amazingly well! He was very stable throughout the whole surgery. Last night he had some issues with his heart rate, so he was given morphine and it helped a lot. He spent a majority of the night asking for water when he would stir. He's also only been waking up for a couple minutes at a time and then will sleep for a while.

Today.

This morning the doctors rounded and decided on doing the following today:
Start Owen on Lasix
Remove his Catheter and his ART line
Start Oral liquids, but restrict them. He's only allowed about 600ml's of fluid a day plus his meds.
Start with PT/OT
Decrease his Precedex
Get up and moving a little bit

Allowing him liquids has been a great helper, because he can get some much needed relief to his mouth and throat, and also stop asking for water all the time!

The Catheter and ART line were removed around 10 am and PT/OT stopped shortly after that. Owen must have heard us discussing him sitting up today and he pretty much sat up on his own. (Slowly and grumpily, I might add) He wanted to sit by Kevin so he sat on the edge of the bed next to Owen and Owen pretty much fell asleep sitting up. It's a lot of hard work! When asked if he wanted to sit in the chair with Kevin, he said yes, but as soon as the blanket was pulled of his lap he refused. We were able to get him back into a laying position and he took a nap for a while. He woke up begging for Kevin and then tried sitting up/rolling onto his tummy by himself to try to get to him. We were able to move Owen enough for Kevin to lay next to him in bed for a little bit.

We went for lunch around 12:45 and Owen ended up taking a 2 hour nap! Since morning rounds his Dex has been cut in half and his lasix dose has been doubled. He played his tablet for about 5 minutes and is now napping contently again. There's a very high chance Kevin and I will end up sleeping at home tonight. He's still pretty out of it.