❤️ Update

 It’s Noon. The Surgeon just called me and they had to do quite a lot of clean up. Ethan is stable. Phew!  There were no cardiac arrests.

When the surgeon went in, he found some blood clots outside of Ethan’s new heart. This is because his blood pressure was yo-yoing and the team was chasing his blood pressure all night. They would load up on fluids to stabilize his blood pressure which would good things up and then he would need a transfusion. 

They were able to remove those and clean up around the heart. Typical teenage boy is leaving a mess all over the place.  Ethan was also having trouble with his new heart because the pressure in his lungs are so high. This is due to his body acclimating from a defective heart to a normal heart. They think this will stabilize over time.

They found a clot around the ECMO cannula that is helping his new heart to pump and his lungs to oxygenate. This was preventing it from working efficiently. They were able to remove and replace that.

Also, the surgeon felt it was best to create an Atrial Septal Defect (ASD) which is a hole between the right and left atrium. This will help alleviate some to the lung pressure. This will heal over time, or if not, they can fix it later.

They then did an echo.  They found that there was a clot inside the heart.  They had to surgically open his new heart and remove that clot as well.  It is now clean enough to eat off of. They are hopeful that they avoided him having a stroke but only time will tell.

They said that they still left his chest open for the ECMO tubes to continue to help his heart and lungs heal.  Later in the week they will take him back to surgery and remove the ECMO tubes.

They were able to eliminate one of him medications so fingers crossed he will be able to heal properly and gain strength.

He is still on insulin which will hopefully only be for a few weeks to months and be considered a transient diabetes.

I will hopefully get to see him in about an hour or so. I am doing better than I was this morning. I did an decent ugly cry but then remembered that Ethan is stubborn. He has many things he would like to accomplish.  

One thing he said to me the day he was waiting for his surgery was that he is going to live the hell out of this heart and treat every day like his last.  Because you never know if it will be your last or not.  Perfect logic.