Caden did not go into surgery until about 2:00 PM. We think the surgeon’s morning case ran a little long. We are waiting in the PCICU waiting room. We did decided to go forward with the artery/esophagus procedure. The doctors and the surgeon did not seem suprprised by our decision. They were actually well prepared for this decsion. The heart surgeon and ENT doctor spoke last night about Caden’s case. We even got a suprised visit from Caden’s ENT when we arrived today. He wanted to take a quick look at things and ask us if we also wanted to get Caden’s right ear tube put back in. Caden lost the right ear tube shortly after getting it installed back in January. The heart surgeon’s nurse practitioner said that this is a first. She has never seen a kid get ear tubes in during a heart procedure. We are grateful that it can be done without another visit.
We expect for the entire surgical process to take between three and four hours. I will post another update once Caden is out of surgery.
The new PCICU waiting room is way cool. It is dedicated to pediatric ICU cases over here in the adult hospital at MUSC. The last two times Caden was in the PCICU (the only children’s unit in the adult hospital that I am aware of) we had to wait in the area that served all the adult ICU patients and families. That waiting area got scary late at night on a couple of occasions when vicitims of shootings and stabbings start rolling in late at night. This new waiting room also has two computers so I can do updates pretty easily. Oops…spoke too soon. The waiting room monitor guy just came to tell me that the computer room will be closed down at 4PM and will not open back up at 9PM. It looks like future updates this evening will come from my trusty little Treo 650.