Moving Forward

Today has been crazy. It started at 10:00 when we were arriving to the hospital. While pulling into the parking garage my cell phone was ringing. It had a 415 area code and that is the hospital. You just never really want a call from them. It was Owen's cardiologist on the phone. This was Owen's week to have things done. There was always a chance that they might be able to do a MRI on Owen and see his pulmonary veins that way, but it was thought by the team of cardiologist that his veins were to0 small to be to seen. I guess that they talked with whomever does the MRI's and they said that they should be able to see them. With this type of MRI they have to control Owens breathing. To control his breathing they will insert a breathing tube into Owen's trachea and take over his breathing. Prior to doing this they will give Owen a few different meds that will make him sleepy and another that will paralyze all of his muscles. These meds are common and I use them at work so don't let the paralyze med scare you, it is done to most of everyone when they are intubated. Chelsea and I were able to see Owen right before this and were able to give him a kiss. He was awake so that make it even more difficult as he was looking at us and then we had to leave him in the hands of others. Today has been my hardest day so far and I'm sure Chelsea's too. What do you do? You are so helpless. You sit and hope that everything is going to be okay but you feel that you want to come out of your skin with emotions. We did not get to see Owen until 3:oo pm and we had not heard anything. We tried to keep ourselves as busy as possible during that time but it was hard. Owen had his normal entourage of docs and nurses with him through the whole procedure from what we were told. I got the understanding that he stressed out the cardiologist and our nurse when the MD said I think I just lost years off my life with that stress and our nurse said she wanted a drink after it all. I don't even drink that often but I can see their point! I have been writing the blog through out the day and we are getting ready to head home(Ron's house) soon for the night-run some errands and wash clothes. Some of the results they are telling us are complex to understand so I will try to explain them. Owen's right ventricle that pumps blood to his lungs is only pumping 1/3 of his total blood volume. The rest will shunt across from the right atrium to the left atrium. So if only 1/3 of his blood in is making it to his lungs only that small amount is getting oxygenated. The next issue is that is pulmonary veins that return the 1/3 of his oxygenated blood. Only part of his oxygenated blood is making it to his left atrium and even a smaller amount is making to his left ventricle to get to the rest of his body. He has part of his pulmonary veins drain oxygenated blood to his to his right ventricle which is the deoxygenated part of the heart. This is why he turns so blue. He is not moving a lot of oxygenated blood around his body. Tomorrow is the big meeting, the decisions will be made from what we are told tomorrow but we have been told that before. The cath is not completely off the table at this point but maybe we can avoid that if possible. Owen will stay intubated (on a breathing machine with a tube) through the night until we know what the plan is tomorrow. He has been stable since the MRI and should stay that way. Hope you could understand the medical stuff if not feel free to ask a question and I will try to answer it. PS. if you want to leave a comment you need to have a gmail email account. Chelsea has one only for this purpose and doesn't check her email, but can leave comments on other bloggers. We do go back and read all them even if we don't respond. I will keep you all posted.
-Chris