Day 10

William George sent his favorite emissary to Grammie

I am sitting here in mom's hospital room waiting for occupational therapy or physical therapy to show up. We were awakened every two hours last night and got up for physicians' rounds at 6:00am. The wake up calls here are abrupt to say the least.




Sometime today our patient will be transferred to the rehab floor for inpatient rehab. Her vitals and stats still look excellent, and her heart is in impeccable shape. The aneurysm repair was successful. The procedure by which the repair could occur is called hypothermic circulatory arrest (HCA). You can read about it here and here. We knew that mom would be placed on the bypass machine, but circulatory arrest was not explained to us. Her surgery had been compared to routine bypass surgery (or maybe that's what we heard). We only learned  of this essential surgical step a couple of nights ago from a 25-year veteran nurse who explained, step-by-step, what transpired during her surgery. The complications she has experienced are due to lack of blood flow to the brain during surgery. In short, she has experienced brain trauma, complicated by anesthesia. This explains why all of the other surgical patients have come and gone. They did not have that trauma, and they recovered in textbook fashion. As the nurse explained, mom had the worst cardiac surgery they perform.  Post-operatively, a couple of other nurses alluded to that, but the nurse the other night walked us through it. The worst of the worst.




Having that information prior to surgery would have been helpful.  Granted, it would have been terrifying to have that knowledge during surgery, but having that information beforehand would have enabled some post-op planning. We could have discuss post-op therapy and had plans in place.  We have all scrambled to make sure we are available so that we can be laser-trained on restoring 100% of baseline functionality. We are determined to put together a stellar team of occupational, speech and physical therapists to make sure that happens.  We have seen daily progress, and we cannot wait to see the results of therapy.   


We are so thankful for the progress so far and are so proud of our cardiac superstar.