Awake, and waiting

Riley is awake and back in his room. He recovered quickly from the anesthesia and immediately wanted juice and food. Mom brought his some fruit leathers which he promptly devoured. He's eating Cheerios and watching Bob the Builder in his room now. He's in decent spirits. Still to come this afternoon: a chest x-ray, urine sample (joy) and an EKG (which he despises). No blood samples necessary.

Right now we are waiting for news from the surgeon. He is in deep discussions with a cardiologist and the doctor who performed the echo. Early indications are that they are concerned that Riley's veins cannot be reattached to the pulmonary artery in a patch. Dr. Karl told us earlier that he cannot connect individual veins (or doesn't, or "likes to avoid" - we can't remember his exact words). What does that mean? We don't yet know. Our nurse practitioner told us that cases like Riley come along extremely infrequently, she said less than once a year. That means that she can't give us any indication of what happens next because she just doesn't know.

A web search gives us results about Fontan procedures "with hepatic vein exclusion" which seems to indicate that the hepatic veins are left in place. Presumably this results in patients with lower sats as a result and who knows what other complications. If the Fontan goes as planned, he'll be in normal sat range post-op. So right now we just wait, it could be a while.