Getting Ready...

Monday, April 4, 2011

Well things are in full swing here. We finally made it through John being gone for a week and now are trying to wrap our head's around Griffin having surgery on Wed. For John and I we keep going back and forth between being happy that the surgery is finally here and wanting to take Griffin and run away from it all.

Today we took Griffin in to get his chest x-ray, labs done, and a meeting with our surgeon's nurse. I tried to ask all my questions so I could be prepared for anything. My nurse Natalie is always the best at setting my mind at ease and walking me through it all. So thankful for her. Griffin did great, didn't love the blood draw or as you can see the x-ray, but besides that he was is crazy life filled self.

The plan...

We will be taking him in on Wed morning. He has to be there by six and will be first in line for surgery. The surgery should last about 4-5 hours (depending on how much scare tissue they have to go through). They will put him on the ECMO machine (heart long bypass machine) and then will be detaching his inferior vena cava and then reattach it to pulmonary artery (which will feed straight into his lungs). Which should make it so his blood oxygen levels should be in the 90's (what a normal person's levels are).

After surgery the first day will be tough. He will be out of it and probably in a lot of pain. Then hopefully each day he will get stronger and a bit more back to himself. For the first few days he will have to keep the chest tube in which can be quite uncomfortable. But our nurse told us that after a bit he will be able to get out of the bed and actually play on the floor or get up and move around (even with the chest tube still in). Knowing Griffin he will want to get up and be everywhere!!! Then the big thing they need to do before he can go home is regulate the blood thinner that he will be taking. They told us to plan for him to go home in about a week.

I won't even go into what we are preparing for as we go home until I know exactly what will be happening.

Our sweet Griffin.

That is about it from here. John's parents get in late tonight and then we will be preparing and having some good family time tomorrow. Please pray for peace and strength as we prepare for it all.