strong little guy

Hunter is doing very will after his first operation, thus far. He is still fighting the meds to show Mom an eye. He is pink and warm, and he even has this pedial (foot) pulses back in both feet. If he loses some of the excess fluid over night. which he is carrying then he might even get his chest closeded tomorrow. ( For thoses of you I have not been in touch with , Hunter had his chest opened for a few days, until the heart stops swelling and it goes down, then they are going to close his chest with wires, {don't worry he has his skin closed})The veiw from our room at the Hotel.

Surgery or no surgery that is the still the question.

We are waiting until Tuesday to here from the doctors which open heart surgery on Hunter. Wednesday he got off the prostin but he did not like that very much his blood pressure dropped and his kidney’s shut down. It was a very rough day for every one, hence that is why we have not be doing many updates. They started the prostin again and Hunter is doing much better, but the fact that he did not like being off of if tells us that his left ventricle is not in as good of shape as we all had hopped. I talked to the surgeon on Monday and she told us depending on what happens with the echo on this coming up Monday they will decide which of to procedures.
They are going to consider doing, one is called the “ ross procedure Ross procedure” (click the blue word for more info) it is essentially trading his pulmonary artery with his aortic valve and then inserting an artificial pulmonary artery.
The other one is called a “Norwood” (click the blue word for more info) procedure and it is a bit more complicated. They join the pulmonary artery with the aorta the problem being this heart will now work as one pump and not two so his blue and red blood will be mixed. So the next step is to divert the blue blood to the lungs through another vessel, which they will insert in Hunters humeral (arm) vain. That is the first surgery then when Hunter is about 4 months then they take the top part of the Vena Cava ( the main vain to the heart) and divert it directly to the lungs and then later in life another surgery to move the lower part of his vena cava to the lungs. Of course the procedures are a lot more complex than that, but that is the readers digest version.
Either way if Hunter needs open heart surgery then he is going to need more than one. There are a few things that are going to be the determining factors. The direction of the blood flow through the ductus is the major one, and the other main factor is going to be the pressure difference between the atria and the ventricle of the left side of the heart. The doctors will find out from the echo cardio grams on Monday if Hunter is going to need any procedures or what information they need to decide which procedure his is going to have.
It has been very up and down emotionally for us some days you get good news some days you have set backs. We are doing our best with the present circumstances. Nicole and I thank you all for your kind hearts and warm thoughts. We have been lucky enough to have a few friends come up for a meal or a visit, it is always nice to have new faces around. We have moved out of the Ronald McDonald house, back into the Westin downtown. This way Abby can stay with us for a few nights maybe longer, it is nice to have her around. She loves to go swimming in the pool, and she quite liked the whale that she could walk inside at West Edmonton mall. It has been hard on her she knows her baby brother is sick, but at the same time all she wants to do is go home.

quick update

Just got out of the NICU for a bit, the legion of doctors are going to have a cardiac conference on him today, But after talking with the surgeons it looks like they might just leave him be, for a while. They are going to try to take him off of the prostaglandin drug today, which means a lot, that drug is an arterial dilator, but it has some nasty side effects like it makes him over heat and it can cause apena ( stop breathing). So if he gets off of that drug then he can get off of the respirator as well. Yeah.
They are going to tell us more this afternoon. We don’t know at this point if that is a delay in surgery or we get to avoid that all together. For now the blood is going in the right direction and he is doing better than he was last week.

more pictures of the little guy

Annoucing Hunter Riley Wiens Born July 31, 2007

I just want to spend a little time catching everybody up on what has been happening the past few days.

On Tuesday at 8:21 in the morning after getting to the hospital at about 7:10, yep that fast, Nicole gave birth to our beautiful little boy. Hunter Riley Wiens, he was already a miracle baby then, because the umbilical cord had been wrapped around his neck not once but twice. He was born with out incidents, although Nicole not call it that, She was so fast to deliver that she did not have time to have an epidural. We got to hold him and hug him after he got cleaned up a bit first.
Big sister Abby was so excited to see her baby brother now that he was finally here. She did not want to go back to Grandma & Grandpa’s with out him “ I want to keep him” she said.

About 12 hours later we were told that he had a heart murmur but it was nothing to worry about because it is pretty common for babies to have those when they are first born. The murmurs tend to dissipate on their own. I went home to catch some sleep at around 11 pm on Tuesday night, with Nicole and Hunter safely in their beds sleeping away.

In the morning I received a call from Nicole as I was on my way to the Rocky View Hospital telling me that they had moved Hunter into the special care unit. His murmur was not going away. The doctors had an echocardiogram (ultrasound of his heart). When they had the results the doctors in Calgary came to us and told us that Hunter had an Aortic Stenosis which means the valve in the left ventricle of his heart was not opening and only had a tiny whole for the blood to travel thru to the rest of his body. They were going to send him to the Stollery children’s hospital in Edmonton, because they have a pediactric cardiology department, In the mean time he had to be intibateded and central lines for both the veins and the arteries were put itto Hunters day old umbilical cord. The Doctors in Calgary started a intravenous medication called Prostin. This drug holds open the artery in his heart (ductus arterious) that is normally only open when he was inside Nicole, the ductus by passes the left side of the heart since when Hunter was inside Nicole he did not need to us his lungs. The reason they gave him this medication was to lessen the stress on the heart and keep his blood flowing.
The transport nurses came to pick him up and send Hunter on a plane to Edmonton.

My Mom and Dad drove us up and our truck after a quick stop at home to get some clothes and things we would need, and to give Abby a great big hug and kiss from here baby brother. We were both in no shape to drive and there was no room on the plane for us. Hunter had 3 transport nurses and to EMT’s on the plane with him. he got to Edmonton about 4 or 5 in the afternoon. We were only a couple of hours behind him. When we got to the NICU they told us we could stay in the parents room for the night it is inside the NICU just off to one end. It was small and had a twin bed with a pull out mattress below but that was no consolation for being only 15 feet from him for the night. As we walked in the NICU he was having an echocardiogram done again, this time by the cardiologists. They explained to Nicole and I that they wanted to insert a catheter in his legs and up to his heart, they were going to do valve dilation, Which means they use a balloon to force open the valve and allow more blood to flow through his heart. This procedure decreases the pressure on the ventricle and increase the blood to the rest of the body.

After the surgery the doctor told us that the balloon inflation worked well, the pressure on the left ventricle was now down. Now it is up to Hunters ventricle to relax to reshape it has been working so hard that it’s muscles were enlarged from working under so much pressure for so long.

On the weekend Nicole’s Mom, Dad , Abby and her uncles came for a visit. Hunter loved to hear his big sisters voice; he smiled every time he heard it.

We have had a lot of ups and downs, somedays are good some are not so good. But we appreciate all the well wishes, prayers, and just wanted to let you all know that we have the best friends and family what any one could ask for. Thank you so much.