Update and Blessing

The surgery Friday went well and they even let us come home that night. Link was a ROCKSTAR and is doing great! One day I will scan in a line drawing of his heart and explain it in more detail but here's what we know now... the Dr. who performed his surgery said that the pulmonary valve looked great (he didn't need to re-balloon it) and the BT Shunt looked great (not clogged at all). He said the reason that Link's oxygen stats are so low is that the right side is still leaking out the wrong way and bypassing the lungs. The right side is sending some un-oxygenated blood throughout the body and not up the pulmonary valve to the lungs to get oxygenated (When I scan in the picture it will make more sense). His recommendation was to wait til he's older and keep him on oxygen (I don't know what 'older' means. He talked about this same thing with a child that was 10 months old so we'll see...) and then going in and coiling off the BT Shunt (which will need to be done at some point) and then closing off the area that is leaking unoxygenated blood. If that works and the right side handles it okay, Link would have a normal working heart just like you and me. They would have to open him up eventually and divide the shunt so it doesn't distort the heart. And he would still need valve replacements every so often (but the Dr. mentioned that they are starting to do that in the cath lab as well). And if it doesn't work then we can still do the Glenn surgery. We are meeting with our cardiologist in a couple weeks. We are hoping that we can talk her into trying the cath lab before doing the Glenn!!!

Sunday, we had Lincoln's baby blessing. Russell gave a beautiful blessing and we were able to spend the day with our family. It was so great to be with all our loved ones!