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.