Alexander's life January 31, 2006

TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2006 05:52 PM, CST
It's been a long 3 days. It's sometimes hard to imagine he is only 3 days old because it has been a lifetime it seems.

Alex has continued to be stable. He is on the ventilator but has always done all of his breathing on his own. His PDA is being kept open by a medicine called prostaglandin, PGE1, until they can fix his heart.

Today he had a procedure done where they put a catheter up the artery in his leg into his heart. This test let the doctors see exactly how his blood flows through his heart so that there are no surprises during surgery. They gave us some pictures and tried to explain what they meant but unless you do this for a living it's all pretty much japanese to us. We do know that there was significant narrowing in his left pulmonary artery.

So far we are told Thursday is the day he will have his first surgery. They will do a shunt procedure in his heart to allow the PDA to close as it should and let blood flow to his lungs, he will have his pulmonary conduit placed. From there we are told they will let him heal, get him home to grow and plan the big surgery when he is big enough to withstand actual open heart surgery.