Wisdom Heart

What a terrifying day. We are settled into the PICU now. For those of you out there who have gone through similar surgeries it should be noted that rather than going to recovery after surgery at Children's Mercy the cardiac kids go straight to the ICU from the OR.
I will try to summarize the surgery. As you may know if you have been following the updates today, Sophia was on bypass and her repair was pretty much complete at around lunchtime. However when she came off bypass, it became evident there was a thinning in the muscle wall of the right ventricle. This was evident in the echo because it ballooned out as the heart pumped the blood to the lungs. So, this was the reason she went back on bypass the first time. The surgeon removed the thin weaker tissue and gathered the stronger tissue together and patched and reshaped the ventricle to work more efficiently. Then she came off bypass again and started bleeding. As I noted in the last post, this was likely caused by the combination of the many suture holes in the hard to suture muscle of the heart and the sort of general leakiness caused by being on bypass. This bleeding was never isolated but slowed enough to get her off bypass a third and final time.
So summarizing, this surgery should have been completed by early afternoon. But due to complications went on until early evening.
I know I have been tossing this word bypass around. For those of you unfamiliar with what heart/lung bypass is here is a link with more information. Only the beginning couple of sections are relevant to Sophia's surgery but I think it explains the process used to stop the heart in order to perform surgery.
There are many possible post operative complications associated with being on bypass for a long time and especially like this where Sophia was taken off and put back on bypass three times. First, in order to account for swelling and/or fluid leaking into the chest cavity, Sophia's chest was left open.
There will also be a great deal of attention paid to her blood pressures and chemistry. And she will likely have a lot of bloody drainage from her chest drains. I will keep you posted as things change with her recovery.
Somehow with all the time we have spent in the ICU, this part feels more familiar and consequently less stressful. But, we all know that can change.
Thanks for everyone's support. We had many family and friends here at the hospital. And all the comments on the blog mean a bunch to us.