Thursday

Okay Alan came off ECMO yesterday which went pretty well. It was rocky at first getting everything balanced once he was off but he was very stable all throughout the day. Tried yesterday letting him be unparalyzed but it made his pressures go up a little. This morning he had his chest closed. He's looking awesome to us. They'll try again with getting him off paralytic so he can do some wiggling. Alan's a champ. Now that the chest is closed he gets to move forward with the immune supression. He'll have his immune system wipped out so that he can start over with the body hopefully not rejecting the heart.

Latest on Alan on Monday

OK.. sorry I haven't been able to do any updates for awhile. The internet at the hospital and my brain are both not working very well so I might not be able to get on much.
So as far as transplant, we got called a little after 11pm Saturday and he got into the hospital around midnight. A doctor of his left around 430 am to the location of the donor to check it out and harvest it. He went into the OR around 830 am Sunday and got started. The heart arrived around 1130 ish - don't quite remember. It was a very long procedure. Besides just transplanting he required a lot of reconstructive work to his pulmonary arteries and vena cava that were all jacked up. I think he got out around 6 pm.
So, what happened last night around 11-midnight ish, his blood pressure plumitted putting him in cardiac arrest, to the extent of needing to call a code and about 30 seconds of CPR. This episode was likely caused by gause left in the chest to soak up bleeding - compressed the new heart to much to function properly so the sponges were removed and he started doing much better.Then as time went on, his heart was working really hard - kept going back and forth between better and worse. Finally at 8 am Monday, he was put on ECMO which is life support for the heart and lungs. The goal will be to only stay on it for about 48 hours to give the heart a rest. The major risk to that is bleeding, particularly to the head. So far though no signs of excess bleeding.It sucks that he's on the support but for having to be on it, he's doing well in everything else.He's got some awesome docs. The surgeon who worked non-stop all day in the OR on him, sat in his room all night watching his monitor and pushing the syringes of blood volume Alan needed by hand.
Hopefully things will stay about the same for awhile as we get him some rest and then hopefully within a couple days get him weaned off the support and his heart can try working on its own again.

Yay

It looks like the transplant is on. It sounds like a viable heart. The surgeon is on his way to get it and he'll probably be in the ER by 8 am!

Hospital

Well.. we are at the hospital now. Alan got a call that there is a potential donor and got to the hospital at midnight. He's admitted and gotten his blood work and his first dose of immune supression but we haven't heard anything definite as far as if its gonna go through or not.

More info to follow. We're just hoping it goes forward.