Routine Check-Up turns into a Week at BC Children’s

Over the past 3 weeks we’ve noticed Hudson’s oxygen saturation decrease. It’s usually been around 80% but has been decreasing to the low 70’s and sometimes in the 60’ish range. This is expected over a much longer period of time as he outgrows his Sano shunt (the gortex piece of tubing from his right ventricle to his pulmonary artery)… but he is dropping much quicker… We usually update the cardiac team twice a week and last Friday they asked us to come in. He ended up being admitted and they wanted to keep him for overnight monitoring. He had an x-ray and an echocardiogram and things looked ok, the shunt appeared to be in the right place. The next step was to have a CT Scan for a more complete look at things. This was scheduled for Monday. It’s been a battle all weekend to try and minimize the amount of poking with needles our little guy gets… We have to be on top of it because they think they can order blood like he’s a Drive-Thru at a fast food restaurant or something and sometimes they don’t get the vein right away only to dig around with the needle trying to find it. We can’t stand it and it makes us angry that they keep sending someone from the lab up to get blood only for us to turn them away… We always have a sign up that says “NO BLOOD WORK UNLESS PARENT IS PRESENT”.

Today he had the CT Scan and the preliminary report shows that there is a narrowing where the Sano shunt is connected to the Pulmonary Artery (aka PA – brings blood to the lungs to get oxygenated). So they’ll have a closer look at the scans and decide what to do because he’ll need a catheterization, and either balloon the narrowing trying to stretch it or put in a stent to keep it open.

So now it looks like we’re here longer…. possibly most of the week… UGH We weren’t expecting this… This is going to be a hard one trying to juggle someone being at the hospital with Hudson overnight and with the other two kids.

Interestingly enough, all three kids will be at BC Children’s for something tomorrow… Hudson is just here in Unit 3M where I have been blogging on/off this entry for the past 3 hours and tend to him, Hayley has a checkup and Hayden is getting his teeth fixed first thing in the morning (he has to go under general anaesthetic). Gabby and her sister Adriana will be coming in for a 630am appointment tomorrow so they’ll have to wake Hayden/Hayley up early… Might not be pretty especially when the kids seem to have been going to sleep later these days (9pm+). They need at least 12hrs or they’re cranky, but who wouldn’t be 😀

Hudson seems to be OK at this moment… He’s been feeding every hour since he hadn’t had too much today… a good 10hour stretch without formula… I don’t know if they gave him much during his CT Scan. The scan itself is only a few minutes but the prep is the long haul.

Well, we’ll see how it goes this evening with him, I have tonights duty at the hospital while Gabby takes care of the kids at home. Poor grandma (“Poyita” as the kids call her) had them both today while we were with Hudson at the hospital…

We’ll wait for the actual report and decisions hopefully tomorrow morning…

–Chris