Catheter Lab

Waiting to go into surgery

We left the house this morning at 8AM to make the rush hour drive to Hope Childrens' Hospital for Muriel's scheduled catheter lab.  Arrived just before 9AM and checked in, then sat in the waiting room.  A more pressing case was before ours and we didn't know how long we might have to wait.  Muriel had been up horribly crabby the night before and I had been up late working, so there was little sleep between the three of us, all dragging.

Around 10AM we were brought back to the Peds unit for vitals and prep talks with the Anesthesiologist and Dr. Patel, who would be performing the lab.  Poor Muriel hadn't eaten anything since 8PM the night before, and wasn't allowed to drink anything either (had a sip of water at 7AM and that was it).  She really wasn't in the best of moods.  Dr. Patel described that he would go into the vein in her neck and the artery in her thigh to reach her heart.  They would be taking pictures, injecting dye and taking more pictures, and measuring things like flow and the size of the pulmonary artery (this artery will be taking the blood flow from the lower half of the body, and must be deemed ready for that extra load).  He would also be looking for stray blood vessels that may have branched out from major vessels in and around the heart, which is apparently common in these cases, and would interfere with the coming Fontan procedure.  If found, he would actively block them with what he called a "coil".  We expected to go home the same afternoon unless active intervention was required, in which case we would spend the night.

Image from her lab showing the
"coil" closing off the discovered
extra blood vessel

At 11:15AM we took her to the door of the surgical area and let her be carried away.  She wasn't very happy about that either!  We were told the operation would take between 2 and 4 hours, and that someone would come to update us in the waiting area.  In the meantime, we had lunch.

At 12:30 the nurse came into the waiting room to say she was done!  Only an hour?  We weren't sure if that would mean good news or bad.  Dr. Patel came in shortly afterwards to explain that everything was fine, that she was fine and waking up, and that we would be able to see her soon.  He also explained (and showed pictures) that he *did* find a stray new blood vessel - two actually - and that he was able to close one off with a coil.  The other alluded him, and he said he would ask the surgeons to close it if they were able to see it during the Fontan Procedure, but that even if they missed it all would still be well, and she would simply have a slightly lower blood oxygen saturation than we would expect after the Fontan.  Given that she has done just fine with the quite low saturation levels between the Glenn and Fontan Procedures, this didn't seem like too much of a problem.  He mentioned he would be able to get it on her next Catheter lab, should one be needed in that case.

Chugging Pedialyte

Post-surgery

We eventually got to see her, and she was NOT a happy camper.  It took some time to calm her down, and she chugged several bottles of Pedialyte along the way.  They wanted to hold off on any food until we saw she was tolerating the water.  We stayed in the Peds unit for about an hour and a half before being transferred to the 2nd floor main hospital room.  She has mainly slept since then, on top of mommy in the recliner.  Various doctors and nurses have come in to check her vitals and set the monitors.  Fairly uneventful.

71bpm not bad... for a future marathon runner!

In recovery room

Eating dinner with mommy

Snacking with daddy!

She is now eating dinner with Mommy and in a better mood.  We will be here all night tonight.  In the morning there will be an EKG, an ultrasound, and an x-ray, and we should be able to leave before noon.  I'll send an update when we get home.