Owen,
Today has been a big day for us! First of all
you are so brave and wonderful. You gave me the best mother's day
present in the world. You are off ECMO. They took out your cannulas
yesterday and you are no longer attached to that big machine and you
are able to use your lungs to get oxygen. You are so good.
Today
May 15 is the big day that you finally had your surgery. Dr. Camps is
your amazing surgeon. You had to have this surgery to move your liver
back into your belly and close the hole in your diaphragm for your lungs
to expand. It was a big surgery and your mom and dad were very anxious
and nervous. You did so well since you came off of the ECMO (bypass) machine!
We
anxiously awaited Dr. Camps to update us about your surgery with our
closest friends here in Columbia, SC. We waited with Hailey, Katie,
Spencer and Lauren. They helped distract me from all the worries I was
having and were very supportive. Dr. Camps spent about 3 hours doing the
surgery to fix you up. He came out with your wonderful nurse that day
Lynda and said that you did very well and everything went very
smoothly. Your daddy and I had the biggest smiles on our face since the
day you were born!
He said that you ended up having a
fairly large defect in the left side of your diaphragm and had to use a
synthetic patch called a GORE-TEX patch to repair the hole to keep the
chest and abdominal contents separated as they should be. He moved your
liver down which had been kinked and a small part of it looked a little
ratty but he was not worried since the liver is fairly good about
repairing itself. After moving that down he moved your stomach down
which was located right beside your heart making it a little difficult
to fill up when it was in the wrong location. Your little heart was
smashed over on the right side of your chest but after surgery moved
over to the left where it should be. After that Dr. Camps was looking
for your spleen which should be on the left side of your belly. He
looked around and found that is was somewhat enlarged behind your heart
in the right side of your chest. It is probably enlarged because of
congestion since it was smashed up in the wrong location. Wheeeewh!
After all of that he took out your appendix and closed up your belly
and put in a chest tube. This is the scar under you left lower rib. All
of that work through a now 3.5" incision.
You did an
amazing job! What a strong little guy! We are so proud! All 3 of us were
very strong during all of this and we are all together :) You have an
amazing team of doctors, surgeons, nurses and respiratory therapist. We
can't thank them enough!
You tolerated the surgery very
well and our next goal is to manage your pain and support you through
the next few days. Just after surgery as you can imagine is a very
critical time, but so far you are doing well. We still have you on the
conventional ventilator to help you breath and oxygenate your blood but
you are doing most of the work on your own!
I know all of our family and friends are awaiting pictures of you off of the ECMO
machine but we don't want to upset you too much or cause you any pain
at this time. I will see how you are doing either tomorrow or the next
day and we will try to do a photo shoot.
Even coming
from a family with two doctors as parents, hope, thoughts and prayers
did something for us. My hope for you and our love for each other is so
strong that it is getting us through these hurdles! I told all of your
doctors that the thing you needed most was the strength from our love
for you and here we are still loving each other! As it says in one of
the books I read you, "you are meant to do BIG things" and you will!
Stay strong little bear!
Love,
Mom
