Awake and watching DVDs

Riley is awake and is currently watching movies on the portable DVD player that our friend LeAnn smartly lended us (thanks LeAnn!). He woke up about 4:30 and complained about pain in his leg (where the entry wound is) and wanted juice. They gave him some Tylenol and he went back to sleep. He came around again about half an hour ago and is in much better spirits. (Sadly, Bob the Builder's soul-crushing musical refrain tends to have the opposite effect on his parents).

Dr. Moore from the cath lab came down to talk to us. He explained that they used 18 coils to destroy four collateral vessels. The coils are straight pieces of platinum inserted via the catheter. They spring and expand when pushed out of the catheter. They'll look a bit like ballpoint pen springs on an x-ray. The biggest risks with coiling occur during the procedure, so we're mostly out of the woods. Kids tend to have a low-grade fever for a few days as the body fights off the foreign objects, but that's easily controlled with Tylenol. Eventually the body will clot over the coils and ignore them.

Riley's sats are in the low 80s and Moore believes that Riley is a good candidate for the Fontan next week. We asked about Riley's anticipated energy level post-op since his oxygen levels will be increasing to normal levels. He explained that although the oxygen saturation becomes normal, the body is weakened while it recovers from the "major offense" of significant surgery, but at some point the additional energy levels will take effect.

Riley will get his normal dosages of lasix and amoxicillin before he leaves the hospital tonight. In addition, he'll receive another antibiotic prophylactic as a precautionary measure. He'll get all of his meds as normal until he comes back to UCSF next week except for aspirin, which is now discontinued until after surgery.

We're still on the charts to be discharged at 8pm, hopefully that will hold and we can get out of here at a decent hour. I tried to get some shut-eye earlier in the family waiting room but at some point a large family joined me and my rest session degenerated into a "learn Spanish while you sleep" experiment. (Empirical findings: the efficacy of such a program remains in doubt - I didn't get much sleep and my Spanish hasn't improved markedly).