Thursday 29th September 2011

No post yesterday as we didn't have a very good day and by the time we got home we were completely exhausted.

So, Freddie went into theatre for his heart surgery at about 9am yesterday. Jon and I spent the next five hours sitting around outside the hospital waiting to hear some news. At about 1:30pm I rang the intensive care unit and they said they were expecting Freddie back from theatre within half an hour. This was great news, as you sit there thinking the absolute worse. When we got to the unit they were just getting Freddie sorted back in his spot so we sat in the family room waiting. In came the surgeon and his assistant and the nurse, shutting the door behind them. The surgeon (Mr Lotto) proceeded to tell us that when he got in to look at Freddie's heart things weren't as he expected. It's fair to say at this point that I felt like somebody had punched me in the stomach and I don't really remember anything else said at this meeting because tears and hyperventilating took over.
The info we got was that they were going to do an emergency CT scan on Freddie to get further information as there was an issue over the blood flow to his brain.

After more agonising waiting and Freddie's CT scan we were joined in the family room by an even larger group of important looking people. What we understand is that in the middle of the narrow area of Freddie's aorta there is a blood vessel leading away from the heart. The surgeon was aware of this and it was thought that the blood in this vessel was flowing to his left arm. In order to correct the narrowing the surgeon has to remove the narrow part of the aorta then fix it back together. There is a good chance that the vessel coming off the narrow area will have to be sacrificed. This very rarely causes a problem for the baby's arm as blood is found from elsewhere for the development of the arm. However, when the surgeon clamped the vessel he expected to not be able to find a pulse in Freddie's left arm, this was not the case and there became some doubt over whether or not the vessel actually carried blood to Freddie's brain. The consultant cardiologist scrubbed in and was only 95% sure that it did not go to his brain so no procedure was carried out. Freddie was closed up and brought back to intensive care. The consultant explained that 95% was not good enough to take the risk of stopping the blood flow to Freddie's brain.
Bare with me.... after his CT scan and further tests and scans they then came to us at 8pm and said that they were now 100% certain that the vessel did not go to his brain and therefore the blood flow would not be compromised.
So, Freddie is back in theatre this morning having his coarctation repaired this time hopefully.
Sorry if that didn't make much sense, it is all very overwhelming and worrying.
Hopefully the next post will be good news.
xx