Day 44 - Heart surgery? NBD

Another big day is over and done.  Wren's heart surgery happened this morning, and the surgeon was successfully able to get her PDA closed.  Here on heart.org is a useful diagram that shows what happened for both of our girls (and many others born premature).  Wren did very well during the surgery, and surprisingly didn't need an extra amount of help from the ventilator to get through it.  She was under with general anesthesia, and spent most of the rest of the day resting and then trying to wake back up.  

The pediatric surgeon told us that the PDA was so large, it had started causing additional problems - her aortic arch was smaller than it was supposed to be, and they were worried that there was a potential that closing the PDA at this point could potentially cause circulation problems or just a high amount of pressure on the aorta.  They held it shut briefly to test how she would do with it and found that it would not cause any problems.  Since the PDA was so big, she did not get a metal clip to match her sister's.  Instead, they had to basically tie the ductus shut with suture thread (the type of stuff used for stitches).  It closed up nicely, and they were able to glue her back up and let her rest.  Within an hour or two of having the surgery, her oxygen needs were already dropping down to much better levels.  As of now, her oxygen is at 38% (down from ~60% two days ago) and a pressure of 32 down from 44.  Fist bump.

From what I understand, the reason why a PDA causes problems for breathing in particular is because it causes some oxygenated blood to get sent to the lungs rather than circulate through the body, and this in turn causes a buildup of fluids within the lungs that make it increasingly difficult to breathe over time.  Some of the fluid should start to clear out within 24 hours, but like her sister she will have at least a couple of days to need to recover, and in that time her settings may bump back up and she will continue to need pain medicine as well.

Avery got sent over to another room in the NICU for most of the day.  We hung out there during the surgery and spend time with her.  She is doing really well and continues on our path of slow progress.

I really hope we get to see Wren follow suit and get off the ventilator sometime in the next couple of weeks.  I can't believe what great fighters these girls are.