Friday, November 6, 2009

My Mom's Open Heart Surgery

Hey well this week has been a good and kind of worrisome one.
My mom has had heart problems for years with her heart in aphib. She has had a hard time going up stairs, or any inclines. She is tired of it, so my mom went to hospital on the first Tuesday in November. She got prepped for surgery on Wednesday. She was supposed to go in for surgery around 1:30pm. She didn't get in until about 2:30pm. There was about another hour of prep work and she was put through surgery. This is a recap that dad emailed about the surgery.

Wendy's (Mom's) Heart surgery was a success. It was a 5 hr operation. It didn't end until about 7:15pm MTN. They successfully repaired the mytral and Tricuspid valves. They performed "maze" ablation, and reduced the enlarged portion of her heart. While in there, they found an "appendage" which they removed. I think the "appendage" was a result of uncirculated blood over time.
The only glitch that occurred during the surgery was one of the pacemaker leads detached from her heart. They re-attached it. I guess it was the best time for a lead to come detached, the surgeon and doctors where right there to fix it. As a result, they decided to not re-set the pacemaker deeper. So the pacemaker still protrudes showing a bump below her left front shoulder blade.
Wendy did well with the heart-lung" machine. She is in ICU right now and is on a ventilator, (normal procedure). She will not be conscious until perhaps tomorrow morning. She will go off the ventilator then she will have to exercise her lungs to get her lungs back into the whole breathing thing again.
That's all for now. Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers.

She is currently still in the hospital in Albuquerque. She was on a ventilator and I am currently trying to find out if she is off of it yet.

Thanks to everyone who asked and showed concern. Especially thanks for your prayers.

1 comment:

Holly said...

We're glad everything went well. We're hoping for a speedy recovery.

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