Mighty Oakes Update 6.15.11

All – Oakes had another good day today. They’ve weaned him completely off his Versed and his Morphine has been lowered quite a bit. He’s much more alert and awake. The big news of the day – Becky got to hold Oakes for a couple minutes. She kind of had to talk the nurse into it, but I got some great pictures of Mama and her boy (scroll down)!

Oakes is down to a 6 on his vent, which is great. They’re weaning him off his pain and sedation meds so that he can breathe on his own as they lower his vent.

We met with a nurse coordinator on the transplant team who answered some basic questions for us. The entire team will meet at 7:30am tomorrow and formally agree that Oakes should be put on the transplant list as of this Friday.

We had a discussion with Dr. Huddleston again today and we’re simply in wait-and-see mode with Oakes. Dr. H wants to see if Oakes can get off of the vent and how his body responds to breathing on his own. Meanwhile, they’ll continue to track how his pulmonary veins are doing via echocardiograms and possibly another cath surgery. He said, again, that he has not entirely ruled out another surgery before resorting to the transplant but that it’ll take time to see how his veins are doing and how Oakes does off the vent. He still thought it was a good idea to go on the transplant list because it doesn’t mean we’re obligated to go through with the transplant at any time, but we start to accumulate time on the list. He mentioned that the catheter last week was more successful than they thought and that the results of the profusion scan yesterday were better than they expected. The EKG they did Monday showed better bloodflow from the pulmonary veins, but again, they expect that to worsen over time. It’s just not clear how much time will go by before they worsen. He said he’d be “surprised” if they didn’t worsen….

Becky has recovered nicely from her appendix surgery. She was happily popping pain pills the other night and had the best night’s sleep she’s had in decades (I’m joking….about the decades and the “popping”). But she has slept well the last couple nights and has taken it pretty easy around the house. She’s still looking cute as ever as you can see by the pics below!

Love,

G,B,I,O