Closed Chest!

Today the baby had his zipper installed. We were running a bit behind because the morning brought rain and extra long traffic. Luckily the OR was running a bit behind as well. When I got to the PICU I had 10 minutes before the team came to take the baby back. He was still doing well and everyone was excited about his progress.

They took him back attached to the monitors, and once again I walked back to the beginning of the sterile area. They allowed me to give him a kiss. I tried to kiss his little head and got forehead patch and tubing instead. Well, that will change soon and I'll be able to kiss his little head.

While they were in there, they "looked at things pretty good" before closing him up. The Left Ventrical is still having a little stiffness, and they did find some sort of odd bloodflow in the atrial. The odd bloodflow was under much debate over where it was coming from, but the end result was that they decided that since all the function was fine, it was nothing to worry about.

After he came back, the baby was pretty konked out. He wasn't responding to touch or sound because of all the drugs in his system. His mother took this opportunity to play with his toes! Well, the drugs started to wear off, and the joy of toe-playing was soon taken away. The baby doesn't like his toes touched and will--despite being heavily drugged--pull away.

Near the end of the day, his heart beat started rising as he was coming further out of his fog. His eyes were starting to open, and he was trying to move. Even when he was resting his heartrate was in the upper 160s (it should be in the 140s). Later it had gotten up to about 185. They gave him some more morphine and some drugs to relax him again.

The heartrate goes up when the heart is trying to deal with the change in pressure in the closed chest. They need to give the heart time to adjust to this new, higher pressure. When there is more pressure, there is more fluid and there is a higher heartbeat. The baby also has more pain as he's waking up, which gives him a higher heartrate. So they gave him some drugs and when I left the heartrate was in the low 170s, and the drugs hadn't taken effect all the way yet.

So hopefully we'll get over this little hump in the road, and we'll get back to the business of healing. I'm sure the baby is ready to get back to it!!