{"id":22367,"date":"2013-12-05T23:20:57","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T06:20:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/?p=22367"},"modified":"2016-01-04T18:49:05","modified_gmt":"2016-01-05T01:49:05","slug":"cori-lou-parents-go-pre-op-procedures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/cori-lou-parents-go-pre-op-procedures\/","title":{"rendered":"Cori Lou and Her Parents Go Through Pre-op Procedures for Open Heart Surgery to Patch Her Ventricular Septal Defect"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cori<\/a>
Cori Lou after her bath this evening.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not everyone<\/strong> will want to read this. The first part won’t be too bad. I’ll just tell you a little about Cori Lou’s procedures to get ready for her surgery. But after that, I will write about what her parents were told the surgery would involve. It is not for the faint of heart.<\/p>\n

Today, Cori Lou<\/strong> was poked and examined. Some of it she handled all right, but she really didn’t like having to be stuck in her arm for a blood sample. The ultra sound (yes, another one)<\/em> was tolerated reasonably. It was discovered that she has an extra superior vena cava<\/a><\/span>\u00a0(major vessel bringing deoxygenated blood from the body to the heart before it gets pumped to the lungs and back to the heart again). <\/em>It is on the left, as opposed to the normal superior vena cava on the right<\/a><\/span>,\u00a0but it is connected to the heart in a way that works fine. They are calling her “turbo charged.”\u00a0(side note: it is not uncommon for people to have anatomical variations that they don’t know about and live fine with them). They also found another small opening between chambers of her heart that should be closing about now in normal infant development, so that will be taken care of during surgery, too.<\/p>\n

The physician’s assistant<\/strong> who will be in the operating room took a look at her, as did the assistant to the anesthesiologist. This is a children’s hospital, so they do surgeries on children every day, and there was a sense of competency without treating her like a number. Cori did seem to eat pretty well throughout the day and her weight is up to 8 pounds 8 ounces by their scales. Not a lot for a 2 month old, but at least still trending up some. She will not be allowed to have her milk after 8 AM tomorrow morning (the day of the surgery)<\/em>, even though the surgery is not scheduled to begin until 2 PM. She may be given some pedialyte, especially if the surgery time gets pushed late. There is some chance that her “elective” surgery could get bumped if anything comes together for another child’s heart transplant. It’s just one of the risks where there is so much pediatric cardiac surgery going on.<\/p>\n

The surgery was<\/strong> explained to her parents with some detail, to inform them of risk and help them understand the timeline. Of course, there are all the normal risks inherent in surgery, from infection to bleeding. There are also some associated particularly with this type of surgery which I will mention later. From beginning to end, it is expected to take 4 – 6 hours. These are the steps after Cori Lou is anesthetized:<\/p>\n