Post Fontan :: Day 14 :: Almost..

Great news!

They decided this morning Derrick's drainage had decreased enough to pull his chest tubes! Woo hoo!! 

Jen and Cathy, the PA and NP...the good guys and the bad guys.  :)  Derrick didn't want them to take his tubes out because he said they "pulled too hard!" :)  They're great!!  They're also the ones who give updates during surgery.  They're kind of handy to have around.

They pulled his steri-strips off since he had some pain meds in him and look at that chest!  Fifteen days ago his chest was open.  The human body is an amazing thing to heal like that!  Not a lot longer until we see that little silver line again.  When I showed him this picture he asked if the black thing was his belly button.  :)  It does look like a newborn belly button, but that's from the middle tube.  We were laughing because now he has an exclamation point!  Ha!

He went down for a chest x-ray and then had an echo.  The echo tech showed us his Glenn and his Fontan, which were really neat to see on the screen.  Lets be honest, I still didn't have a clue what I was looking at, but it was cool to "see it" and watch his new blood flow.  He was a champ, even though I forgot the ring pop!  Mom fail!

We waited all day to find out the verdict.  Dr. K didn't get up to see us until about 6:30 this evening.  Poor family waiting through that surgery!!  Anyway, when he came up he said that everything looked good, but that Derrick has a pneumothorax that developed sometime (we're not exactly sure when, but sometime after surgery).  A pneumothorax is where air gets trapped in the pleural space and causes space between the lung and the chest wall, which can cause breathing issues.  Derrick's is small, but he wants to make sure it doesn't get larger over night.  As long the chest x-ray looks good we'll be out of here in the morning!

Derrick and Dr K giving high fives.

We've done a lot of waiting today so we never did make it to the Atrium.  It's been a packing up, game playing, movie watching kind of day.  Almost every single item that was in this room is already in the car...including clothes and toothbrushes.  Yep, we're roughing it tonight! We just knew we'd be out of here today!  Oh well, it will make for an easy get away in the morning.  :) 

Please pray that the pneumothorax doesn't get any worse, but that it gets better.  He definately doesn't need anything else to have to deal with!  Thank you so much.  Looking back over these last 15 days at the list of things we've asked you to pray for is pretty cool.  Every prayer has been answered and that has not gone unnoticed.  We are so thankful! 

Here's to hoping we're bidding our friends here farewell tomorrow and getting cozy at home.  :)

P.S. Please pray for our friend Bodie.  He's our California heart buddy who we had the pleasure of meeting last year while they were here in Charleston.  He had his Fontan this summer and is still having issues.  He's going in for another cath tomorrow to see what's going on.  Please pray for answers and easy solutions for him and peace and patience for his family.  They are very special to us!