Friday, September 11, 2009

Update #1

Chris, Charlie and I all arrived safely in Cincinnati and a dear friend Kate picked us up and took us strait to University of Cincinnati. Dad is pretty loopy on his pains meds, so he is pretty comical. He seems to be in good spirits so I am happy to see that.

The sharp pain in his chest is more so caused from the pleurisy, an infection of some sort inbetween the pleura of the lungs and it makes it hard to take normal breaths. So they have him on a bunch of pain meds to help him with that. The pain is so bad he seriously watches the clock for the next round of meds. He literally grips the edge of the bed in pain. His white blood cell count was elevated and he has a plureal effusion on the left. But good news is his cardiac enzymes are normal, meaning heart attack wasn't suspected.

The anyuersm they found was more so by chance they think while they were trying to find out what was causing the sharp pain. But it is measuring about 6cm, and they need to do an intervention when it gets close to 5, so that's why he is here. To be specific, it's called an ascending aortic aneurysm. So they will need to do open heart surgery to replace the part of the aorta at the root (the part that pumps the blood directly from the heart) and replace a valve that has been affected from the aneurysm. This surgery is MAJOR and VERY VERYcomplicated, my old cardiac professor told me that this is a surgery you DO NOT want residents doing. You only want the BEST cardiac surgeion in the building. So this is pretty scary. They said he can wait until Monday to do the open heart since he is stable at the time.

He is going in for a routine pre-op cath any hour now. They do this so they can check his arteries incase they need to bypass him when they are already in there for the Aortic repair. They will have the cardiac surgeon in the cath lab at the time in case something were to go wrong.

Poor Dad, all he can keep talking about is how he is going to miss taking his baby girls to college next week to move in. He pleaded with the Doctor to wait, but obviously this is way to serious. It pretty much brings tears to his eyes. It's just sad.

As for me, I am holding up pretty good given the situation plus with what this week means to me already. I don't think it will bother me until I see him post-op on a ventilator, mostly because it's my job to usually manage it. And once again, I am on the other side as family and not a respiratory therapist. It sucks.

Update: Surgery is Monday morning at 7:30 am and is expected to be a 6-7 hour surgery. He is getting the best cardiac surgeon on UC and he will be his first case of the week, which is always nice to have a refreshed surgeon operating on you. Plus he is an OSU grad so it makes my Dad happy.

Alright, cath lab is here to pick him up.

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