I'm officially a blog failure..

And I swear I'm trying to fix that and pick it back up. Things have been just slightly crazy lately. Just a quick summary update - Alan had

a mini-rejection ish episode about a month ago. He was treated with IV steroids and bounced right out of it. Off oxygen and off a whole bunch of his meds at this point.

Then - a few weeks ago, I finally was laid off. The death of the real estate industry caught up to me. Not too bad on timing because I just finished my training to be a CNA. I take my test to be certified in the state next Wednesday. I'm pretty nervous because I actually have a job lined up - which is contingent upon me passing and getting my license.

Mr. Al just had his first real Halloween and decided to go as Superman. No outings for us. We just stayed home and waited for the trick or treaters that didn't show up. Zero. Seriously - we live in a condo complex full of children - how hard would it be to hit up your neighbors for candy. Well 5 bags of candy got left to us to take care of which is never a good thing.

Not too much else exciting to report. I was really hoping that my time of unemployment would bring about a flurry of domestic activity on my part. No such luck. Still just as much of a slacker without working. We're lucky to keep the little guy fed and medicated and maybe a couple loads of laundry done a day.

Latest project is trying to get this guy interested in food. We just saw his GI doc today and we've decided to give dairy a try. maybe he'll be a bit more interested with some yummier options to taste. Might have strawberry yogurt for snack in just a little bit and see how that goes over. Here's a shot of him one tube-less evening before we replaced one of the NG's he'd yanked. And here's my cute little executive office assistant sorting out the sticky notes.

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.

Bubbles

A relaxing and eventless labor day weekend so far. Yesterday we got some bubbles for Alan to play with out on the deck. He really wasn't so sure what to think at first but then he got more and more curious and started to have fun with the whole thing. He's been getting stronger and stronger and doing a great job at sitting up. I love the age he's at. There's just so much wonder in his eyes exploring the world. Ooh and now he's got 2 awesome little teeth on the bottom.

We've been pretty boring lately not being able to go anywhere. I've had way too much time on my hands to get all political. Its fun for me though because this is the first time in my lifetime I've ever seen an election that really mattered this much. Having the DNC in town was really exciting. It made the whole city pretty crazy. I would have loved to try to go to the last night of it at Invesco field but things are a little too crazy here to do anything like that. I'm excited to watch the RNC next week too.