The Daily Kaleb

It’s 10pm here, Brittany and I are currently bedside with Kaleb in CICU. Even though Kaleb currently looks pretty rough we rejoice in the Lord! Kaleb did well during surgery, now we wait upon the Lord through recovery.

His surgery wrapped up around 4:30pm (et) today. It took almost exactly the estimated 8 hours the surgeon told us it would take. Amazing.

He was able to transition off bypass smoothly and now he is back in his CICU room. The team is currently and constantly making minor adjustments to help stabilize him.

Surgery Run Down

The aim of the surgery:

Repair the atrium wall hole in his upper chamber.
Repair the holes in his valves (tricuspid valve moderate/severe back-flow and mitral valve moderate back-flow).

How surgery went

Overall, well. They had to put him through 2 rounds of bypass during the surgery.

Bypass Round 1: They made the ASD repair (the whole in the top chamber wall) and they made the repairs to the cleft holes in his valves. After those repairs were made they take him off bypass to allow blood to flow through his heart, so that they can check the repairs with ultrasound. His upper chambers and lower chambers were in sync (good sign). However, the surgeon found the amount of back-flow that was still in his valves a problem so it was necessary to go back in.
Bypass Round 2: They went back in and made adjustments needed to repair the valve. After this second time his valves were functioning much better.

Surgery Outcome

• All repairs were made successfully.

• The tricuspid valve back-flow is currently mild

• The mitral valve back-flow is trivial. He is currently heavily sedated, fully paralyzed from medication, and on a lot of other medications so his body isn’t doing a lot of work. As he recovers we will see a more accurate report of the back-flow in his valves.

• His upper and lower chambers are a bit out of sync. For now he has a pacemaker to help with keep them in sync. However with all the fluid build up in and around the heart from surgery the pacemaker and heart are having a hard time working accurately. The doctors believe he should be able to adjust back into sync since in the first round of bypass the 4 chambers were in sync, if not Kaleb would continue his life with a pacemaker.

• His left atrium has high pressure levels. It is having a bit of hard time adjusting to the new load put on it from the repairs. They have him on some medications that will help with this but they will be monitoring this closely.

• His chest incision was left open to alleviate the stress on his body from all the swelling and fluid build up from surgery. They plan to close this up within the next few days.

It’s going to be a long few days ahead.

Prayer:

• God would provide strength to Kaleb’s weary body.

• God would allow his right atrium to stretch and strengthen its pump so the pressure can be adequately handled to move the blood across his heart.

• God would strengthen and tighten up his left atrium that has been stretched out from all the back-flow.

• God would put his 4 chambers back into sync.

• The valve repairs to uphold and the heal like new so that his back-flow would be non-existent.

• For the hospital staff to bear witness to glory of God our Father who created them in His image and upholds all things through Jesus Christ.

• For boldness and tact for us to speak and bear witness to the love of Christ and his gospel as we care for those around us. We are weak and weary, it’s much easier for us to shrink back right now. We want to press into the grace we know God has promised to give us during this time.