The Day Before

We weren't looking forward to today's admission to the ward because when we came up in March for Harrison's cardiac catheter it was like the first day of the Harrod's sale and the cleaners appeared to be taking a holiday. What a difference today. Bernard's letter to the Chief Executive of the Trust has definitely had a positive effect. Even though there were initially six children in Harrison's bay, you would never have known. It was lovely and quiet and very quickly three of them were discharged. We have already seen the cleaner four times in our bay (back in March we saw one twice in three days). All of Harrison pre-op checks (blood test, ECG, ECHO, X-ray, general obs, surgeon consent, anaesthetist visit) happened in quick succession and without any reminding from us! All the medical staff who have come to talk to us today have also checked whether Harrison has had any questions. He signed his consent form and said he was feeling confident about tomorrow! We feel more reassured having spoken to one of the surgical team although I can't say that I'm feeling confident! So, what are they planning to do? The plan is to replace the current pulmonary conduit (donated artery fitted over top of Harrison's heart which by-passes his own pulmonary artery) with an aortic artery. The reason being, that should they need to replace the valve in the new conduit, it is now possible to do this by cardiac catheter (through the femeral artery in the groin) which means that Harrison's chest shouldn't need to be opened again. They are also going to cut out part of the remaining pulmonary artery above the conduit where it joins into the left and right lung arteries. This has always been a problem for Harrison as it is a narrowed area which has stents (metal cages) in it, to keep it open. They are going to replace the dissected part with a patch which will increase the size of the artery. At the same time, they will take out the stents as they will no longer be needed. The operation should take around 8 hours in total with Harrison being first on the list at 8am. In true Harrison style, he doesn't want to give the surgeon an easy time, so his current conduit is lying extremely close to where they need to open him up. As a result, they may need to put him on femeral bypass before they even attempt to open his chest. Bernard and I were quite relieved to hear how they were going to tackle this slight technical hitch. We feel a bit better about the procedure now. As I write, Harrison is just off for a chlorahexidine wash. This is a new procedure where he has to shower using a special orange lotion to specifically clean his torso, arm pits, arms, groin and neck. He then has to repeat this cleaning regime in the morning at 6am. We've taken a couple of photographs so that you can see how settled he is. (Note Harrison and Bob's matching outfits!)

He was pleased to have his dinner from the trolley but was devastated to hear that his favourite dinner (pork chops) is being served tomorrow lunchtime. We had a few tears from him over this. We would never have predicted 7 1/2 years ago (where he had been tube fed for over 3 years) that he would eat a normal diet and cry about not being able to have food!

Think that's about it for now. Hope those of you from FLAGS going on the Duck Tours trip have a great time tomorrow. Wish we were coming with you!