Two day delay

Bobby had his pre-surgery tests today - 2 chest x-rays and a whole lot of blood work. The chest x-ray came back pristine but his white blood cells are a little low. The doctor believes he is at the tail end of a virus and wants to give him a couple more days to recover. So, surgery is pushed from Monday to Wednesday.

Bobby had a rough go during his tests. The x-ray involves him being strapped into a little chair with his arms strapped above his head. Naturally, he gets very upset. The blood draw was even worse - it took 3 sticks and 5 people to hold Bobby down long enough to find a vein and extract the blood. The poor thing was so tired afterwards that he fell asleep through his cardiology exam. That gave me a chance to talk to the nurse doing the exam.

This is the third in a series of three heart surgeries needed to compensate for a single ventricle heart. The nurse told me that this one tends to have the fewest complications (although with Bobby no one ever counts on a dearth of complications). The hospital stay, assuming his recovery path is clear, is about 7 days. The first day he will be kept sedated and on a breathing tube. On day 2 they will wake him up and try to get his heart working a little more. This is the fastest way to recovery.

For 3-4 days Bobby will have chest tubes in to drain the blood and mucous out of his chest cavity. The mucous and blood are residuals of the surgery and are to be expected. What's also to be expected is that Bobby will try to pull out the chest tubes. They are slipped under his skin and not attached to anything so pulling them out should be relatively easy and extremely painful. He will likely have restraints on both his arms to limit his movement.

They have decided not to put in a pacemaker for now, although that can always change if there are issues during surgery. They do not think that his low heart rate is sufficiently concerning to require a pacemaker at this time. What they will do is put in the wires for pacemaker so that, if he needs one down the road, the required surgery will be relatively simple.