Heart Catheterization - Tuesday

Laura and I awoke this morning to the glorious sound of her loud, obnoxious alarm clock at 5 am. We struggled to wake up as we staggered around our house in a sleepy stupor. "Why did you guys get up so early?" you might ask....

Well, today is Cole's heart cathererization and we had to have him at the Levine Children's Hospital at 6 am. Basically, today is about putting a camera inside Cole's heart to look around and to take measurements so that they know exactly WHAT they need to do in stage 2 surgery. Laura went in to wake him up at 5:30 am. We tried to let him sleep as long as possible since he was not allowed to eat this morning. His last meal was last night at 8:30 pm so we were a little bit nervous about the degrees of HELL he might raise once he was awake and realized that there was no bottle in sight. To our surprise, he acted like a little angel. His blue eyes were wide awake within minutes of waking up, and he did not make a peep as Laura put him in his car seat to head to the hospital. He had a funny looking "confused" look on his face as if to say "I know these people are not going to wake me up and take me on a trip somewhere WITHOUT feeding me first."

We arrived on time (Praise God!) at the LCH and checked in. Then we were escorted up to the 5th floor (the Children's Day Hospital) to check in. They measured his vitals and his oxygen levels were around 90% (even though he has been averaging 82-84 recently). He was in good spirits and was smiling at the nurses. Then, 2 more nurses came in and started asking questions and we quickly discovered that one of them was being trained. At first, we thought "oh great, just our luck, by all means, bring us the newbie and let us be their guinea pig." Then I remembered being told before that for any nurse to be in this hospital taking care of children, they have to have a lot of experience. Then, she mentioned to us that she used to work in the NICU (she knew our other friends in the NICU) and had 7 years of experience so she was by no means "new." It was almost as if the Lord said to us "see, you jumped to conclusions without knowing....just like you always do." Thanks for that Lord.

When the Q&A was finished, we had to wait for an escort (not *that* kind) to come get us to take us to the area for the Cardiac Cath. We had some time so I decided to get us some coffee.

*off topic*
I knew that they had free coffee in the break room, so I went in there only to hear "we do have a coffee machine, but it is broken." I had to go downstairs to the lounge to get us some coffee. They are supposed to open at 6:30 am, but at 6:55 am they were still setting up - slackers. Anyways, once I bought 2 cups of coffee and got back up the floor 5, the doors were locked. I then proceeded to stand out in the hallway for a good 10 minutes or so until someone walked close enough to the door to hear me banging on it like someone trying to escape a burning house. I finally got in around 7:30 am.

*back on topic*
Shortly after I got back, another nurse came and got us and took us to the Cardiac Cath Lab where Cole's procedure would take place. It was there that we met Dr. Herb Stern. He is very nice and he seemed to know his stuff. He told us that they would need about 45 minutes to set up, then 2 hours for the Cath, and another 1 hour to break everything down. We left Cole around 7:45 am and "how did we drown out our sorrow of leaving him in someone else's hands?" How else, FOOD of course.

We went to Chick Fil A downstairs and ordered a TON of food. We laughed as we heard beanpole after beanpole order Diet Cokes for breakfast. We would laugh and then stuff another chicken mini in our mouths. Just like us Griffins, always eating something.

We figured that since we had so much time to kill, we would stop by to see Amy Petty (Laura's labor and delivery nurse). We wandered around for about 15 minutes trying to find the right floor and wing and once we did, it was well worth it. Amy comes walking down the hall with a mom (in labor) in a wheelchair who was in need of a quick epidural. After saying hello, she said (in a loud southern voice), "ya'all walk with me." We walked with her and her patients (mom and dad to be) as she pushed the "IV drip" pole while turning around and talking to us every few seconds. It was very funny to us....but probably "not so much" to the mom and dad.

FINALLY, we got back to the waiting room and had a chance to sit down for about 10 minutes. Just when we were finally semi-relaxed, another nurse barges in and says "Griffin?" She took us back down to the Cath Lab. Dr. Stern was waiting for us in there (but was still wearing his scrubs and would not touch us, keeping his hands tucked in his patent leather scrubs). He told us that Cole was doing well and his surgery was complete, except that he had some "collaterals" branching off of his pulmonary artery. Imagine the branches of a tree....Cole has too many branches coming off of his pulmonary artery. These are taking more blood to his lungs, which makes his oxygen levels higher (which we thought was good), but over the long term that is not good. The reason is that the blood eventually has to return to the heart and be pumped through, which means that the heart would have too much blood to pump. This causes it to work harder and can cause heart failure, which is "bad.....very bad." The reason they were calling us down is that they had to have our consent to remove these, which we gave them, of course. This explains why his oxygen levels have increased since his first surgery, whereas normally it is supposed to decrease. Dr. Stern said that normally they would remove these bewteen stage 2 and stage 3 of his surgery, but he did not want to leave them for 2-3 years. Also, if left alone, who knows what other complications would happen between now and then. Made sense to us...."since I am in there, I would rather go ahead and take care of these now" he said.

Anyways, it was a pretty big scare because we knew that we were being called back before the estimated time had passed for his surgery. We knew that it would not be good news, so it was just a matter of how BAD the news would be. All things considered, it was good news. It was better to catch this now rather than later. If it had not been caught at all, it would have ultimately led to heart failure. This TYPE of thing is exactly why they do the Cath....the camera can find things that cannot be seen on the Echo.

Cole should be out of surgery in the next 1-2 hours and we can go see him. Also, we might meet with Dr. Watts later on today and talk about the timing of stage 2 of Cole's surgery. We might actually get a date!

Anyways, more updates as we get them. Keep praying!





Being called back now....will update soon.