Glenn Updates

7:00 pm Update

We finally got to see her!  Surgery went well.  Considering her rocky course leading up to the Glenn, they are going to proceed with more caution than typical to let Hope show us how much support she needs in a safe way.  They may extubate her in the next few days, but they also said that if she seems like she needs it, they’ll just keep it around for a few days more until she just doesn’t need it anymore.  Looks like Hope is driving the bus and will begin showing us her plan 🙂 

3:00 pm Update

She is all sewn up and working her way through the wrap up in the OR then up to her new room. The surgery went as well as can be expected. Her pre-op echo showed Hope’s function back down to the depressed levels, which didn’t surprise John and I – we never thought that last echo was an indication of where her function would stay. All in all, the Surgeon said he was very happy with Hope’s procedure and she had no road bumps. She has slightly elevated pressures in her lungs and her overall blood pressure is a little high, but we expect things to settle out over the next few days. We should get to see her again in a few hours.

12:00 pm Update

She is on bypass now. I just realized that we never explained the what the Glenn surgery is and what steps they take. The primary goal of this surgery is to begin the reroute of pulmonary blood flow away from the right ventricle to ease the burden. With no left ventricle, the right side is seriously overloaded, doing its job and pumping to the body and pumping about 2.1x too much to the lungs. You have an inferior and superior vena cava. The inferior routes oxygen depleted blood to your right ventricle from your body and the superior is basically the upper body and brain. The Glenn will remove the shunt that was placed during the Norwood and disconnect the pulmonary vein from the heart. The superior vena Cana will then be attached to the right pulmonary vein, creating a system that completely removes the right ventricle from having to pump the SVC blood to the lungs. This should remove about ~ 40% of the workload her heart has had to do since her Norwood. The team called and she’s off bypass as of 1:30 pm. They need to wrap up and then we’ll be able to meet with the doctors for more questions and information.

10:15 am Update

They officially started the surgery at 10:15.

7:00 am

They took Hope right on time this morning. We’ll post updates as she progresses through the surgery. She looked just perfect as they wheeled her away into the operating area.

Wish us luck and say a little prayer for Hope.