Surgery Update

Well, Alex is doing extraordinarily well. He needed some more sedatives throughout the night and was trying to grab anything he could get his hands on. Denise stayed at the hospital with him while I went home and stayed the night there with Evan and Shirley.

By 5:30 this morning they started backing down on the oxygen level in the respirator and allowed him to start breathing more on his own. The machine would breathe 1 time and then let him breathe the next and repeat.

At 7:30, his hemoglobin was a little low and needed a blood transfusion and his color came right back. This is pretty normal.

At 8:00, I arrived with Evan and Shirley. Evan kept saying "he seepin" and "owie". Evan gave Alex one of his stuffed animals and blew him a kiss goodbye before Shirley brought him back to daycare to see his friends.

At 8:30, they removed his catheter. So, now he's free to pee straight into the diaper. One of the drugs he's on removes fluid from his system. So, he's peeing a lot.

At 9:00, all the doctors came in and said he was doing outstanding. They said the chest tubes and intubation tube would come out today.

At 9:30, they took out the chest tubes. Yeah!

At 10:30, they took him off the sedatives and waited for him to be very awake before they pulled out the intubation tube.

By 11:50, he was opening his eyes and they yanked it out. So, he's breathing completely on his own and doing very well.

Our cardiologist mentioned this morning that he couldn't be more pleased with Alex's progress. Here's some pictures of the morning's progress.