The Interim Days

After that behemoth of a post last time, I think I’ll keep this one down to a little more manageable size (I hope).

In the last installment I left off right after finding out that we would for sure have to do a surgery just a few days after Kyler was born. I had been expecting that we would end up doing a surgery, so it really wasn’t much of a shock for me. While they were doing that initial echo on Kyler’s heart the receiving cardiologist came and sat with me for 15 or 20 minutes to explain what they were seeing and why it was already apparent that he would need surgery without the usual week observation first. Basically, as a result of his abnormal heart structure, he had way too much blood flowing to his lungs, and the pressure of that blood was about four times higher than what the lungs need. So they planned the surgery to place a band around the pulmonary artery to restrict that blood flow down to a more manageable level.

PA (Pulmonary Artery) Band Example

Remember that through all of this Angie was a still a patient over at the University Hospital, so I was trying to remember everything to tell her later. Since we had anticipated observing Kyler for a week or so before they even decided on surgery I was a little nervous to tell her that it was already scheduled (for those of you that don’t know that side of Angie, she really doesn’t like it when plans change). She ended up taking the news pretty well though.

At some point during that first time over at Primary’s, Angie’s parents made it to the hospital. They went straight to Angie’s room while I finished getting everything settled over at Primary’s. That ended up being very helpful because Angie had a few more rounds with the puke express, and her dad handles that much better than I do.

I think the hardest part of that day was not being able to have Angie come over to Primary’s. Being that she had just had a major surgery herself, she was unfortunately not doing well enough to make it over the rest of that day. Those of you that are moms can probably imagine how difficult it would be to only see your baby for about five minutes the day he is born and have to wait a whole day to see him again. I did the best I could to keep her stocked with pictures and video calls, but it was still a tough day.

After a while I was able to take Angie’s parents over to see Kyler for the first time. I had really been looking forward to that because Kyler is their first grandchild, and they were so excited to see him. Seeing a first-time grandma was almost as special as seeing Angie as a new mom. She got to hold him for a while, and may have gotten just a little teary-eyed.

That night was a pretty surreal experience. I spent the night in Angie’s room on an oh-so-lovely armchair hide-a-bed with a pillow that was about as thick as a piece of paper. I was so exhausted that I crashed pretty hard though. It was just so weird knowing that we now had a son, but he wasn’t there with us.

The next day started the cycle of back-and-forth that was my life for several days. Angie’s room was about a 10 minute walk from the CICU where Kyler was. I would wheel Angie over in a wheelchair a few times a day so that she could see Kyler, and I would go over a few times by myself throughout the day while Angie rested. Because the two hospitals are connected by a sky bridge, I actually went about four days without going outside.

Wheelchair Ride - off to visit the Little Peanut

At this point, those few days between Kyler’s birth and his surgery are mostly a blur. We tried to get Angie over to see him as much as possible. I unfortunately had to be the bad guy during this time and take her away from the little guy and back over to the University Hospital throughout the day to take her pain medications. We learned the hard way that missing a dose was a really bad idea.

Snuggles

Thankfully during those few days we were able to hold Kyler relatively easily. He was hooked up to a few machines all the time, but we were able to manage all the tubes and wires pretty well. It was really weird having to be in the hospital because Kyler looked so good at the time. Many babies with CHD have a blue tint to their skin due to lower oxygen levels, but Kyler didn’t have any of that. I couldn’t complain too much about that; for some reason a smurf baby just wasn’t too appealing to me. Just looking at him though you wouldn’t have had any idea that he had a major heart defect.

Happy Family!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Skin to Skin for the first time

Best Snuggles in the World

First "Bath"

At some point during those few days we first met the doctor that would be performing Kyler’s surgery, Dr. Adil Husain. He was the newly hired head of cardiothoracic surgery at Primary’s so we really hadn’t heard anything about him. We were immediately very impressed with him though. He was very professional, but very down to earth and easy to talk to. He came and sat with us for a while to explain the procedure and answer any questions we had, and wouldn’t leave until we were comfortable and understood everything. I’ll talk about him more in future posts; suffice it to say that he made a huge difference in our time at Primary’s.

And with that, I think I’ll wrap it up for this post. I’ll pick up next time with the day of Kyler’s first heart surgery.

Please, no more pictures!