Medical Emergency

This morning, I was at the hospital for doctor's rounds and everything looked good with Caden. They had actually started feeding him breastmilk through a tube which was good news. And, they were making minor adjustments to his ventilator rates. But everything looked okay and he was stable. Just before 12:30, I decided to go back to the Ronald McDonald House and get something to eat so I took the shuttle. I was just sitting down to eat in the kitchen at RMH when I got a call from one of the CVICU doctors. She said Caden was having a medical emergency and I needed to come back to the hospital. She didn't give me much information, just that his heart rate had been dropping and they had to open his chest again. She said they were making sure there was a social worker here when I arrived so I had someone to talk to. I knew that meant it couldn't be good news.

I threw my food in the trash and tried to call my mom who had my car. She didn't answer and I didn't know if she just didn't hear her phone or if she wasn't at RMH. So I ran up 3 flights of stairs to our room to see if she was there and she was not. I had just missed the shuttle back to the hospital so my option of getting there was to walk. I ran/walked the whole way and called Greg as I was leaving RMH. I was crying and told him Caden was having an emergency and I was going to the hospital. He said he would activate the prayer chain immediately and would get his stuff together and drive back over here.

When I got to the hospital I ran to CVICU and upon arriving outside Caden's room, there were about 30 people in there. I honestly don't know how many people were in there or not, but it's a decent size room and it was packed. Not a good sign. The social worker (not Emily who is our social worker) introduced herself and said Emily was not on site but would be coming shortly. She showed me into a room where I could wait to find out further information and sat with me until someone could come in to give me an update.

One of the nurse practitioners came in and said Caden was doing a little better but they were talking about putting him on ECMO (heart-lung bypass machine). This would be a huge step backward in his recovery process and is a bad sign. But she said she didn't really know what the decision would be because it looked like he might be more stable and they wouldn't need to put him on. She went back to check on him and came back, telling me they were holding off on ECMO for now. His heart rate was back to normal and his blood pressure was also normal. His chest was open and they had to do manual chest compressions on his heart once the chest was open.

A very brief synopsis of what happened is this: Caden's oxygen rate started dropping followed immediately by a drop in heart rate and blood pressure. CPR was started immediately and a cardiovascular surgeon was called in to open his chest. With the chest open, they continued to do heart compressions in order to get the heart rate back where it needed to be. They thought there might be fluid around the heart as that can sometimes be a side effect following heart surgery. However when they were in the chest, they couldn't see much fluid so that didn't appear to be the cause of the emergency. After running through a list of things they thought could have caused the drop, they believe it was either pulmonary hypertension or possibly a mucus plug in the endotracheal tube. They were able to get him stabilized and his heart rate came back to normal. However, because they don't want to put undue pressure on the heart, they have decided to leave the chest open for now. They will put a sterile patch over the opening and will keep him on antibiotics to help prevent infection. I have not been able to see him yet as the room is still a sterile environment and they aren't ready to let me in. But, hopefully soon.

Emily arrived and was with me and my mom (who had gotten here by then) when the doctor came in to let us know what had happened. She said she would try to arrange for us to have a bed to stay in here at the hospital tonight if we want it. I told her to go ahead and set it up and we would see how we were feeling tonight. Greg is on his way back from Sacramento right now and is probably wishing he hadn't left. But there was no way for us to know something like this would happen. Caden had been so stable and was doing well so there was no reason for us to think there would be a problem.

I am doing okay at the moment but look forward to having Greg back later this afternoon. Please pray for Caden and that he will be okay following this emergency and that there won't be any permanent damage from lack of oxygen for a time. And, please pray for me and Greg that we might be able to get through this tough time.