Surgery days are always difficult, and they only get more difficult each time.  It gets harder on Dallas and certainly harder on us as well.  The older he gets the more aware he is of everything going on around him.  He is scared and confused and it's hard to see him like that.   The morning started with no food of course, and he tolerated that very well.  His surgery started an hour late and it was 3 hours until we heard word that he was recovering.

The recovery period was almost as long as the surgery and Dallas was very unhappy.  He was given 3 doses of a pain medication called "Fentanyl;" none of which gave him any relief.  They then tried a dose of Tylenol before giving him some Morphine.  Finally, after a solid hour or more of crying...he started to calm down.  Then his breathing was concerning and he was very red.  We pushed for G-tube supplies so that we could get some food in his stomach and after a good effort from the post-op group (feeding is uncommon in this area), we were able to get him fed and then he was really out! 

Results:

CT Angio - No results for 2 days.  This was a cat scan of his coartation repair of his heart.

ABR (Auditory Brainstem Response) Hearing Test - Confirmed previous test results, showing Severe to Profound Hearing Loss..(bummer, you also silently hope that a retest will surprise you in a good way)

Ears - Replaced Tubes

Nose - This is confusing to me, but the way I understood it was that the nasal passages towards the front of his nose(where the previous dilation's have taken place) were open and did not need dilation.  However(and there always seems to be a "however"), they found a narrowing near the back of his throat (or bottom of his nasal passages).  This is not good, but not the worst finding either.  They ballooned the narrowed spot which made the opening 25-30% bigger, but are very restricted here by bone and this area is very close to spinal cord nerves making it difficult to do too much.  The surgeon thought 2-3 more of this type of dilation would be needed and no indication as to how soon the next one would be.  We will follow-up with him in 3 weeks.  We discussed different possibilities and potential outcomes related to this new finding, but for now it's best left as we just wait and see how he does.

We are settled into our room now and Dallas has low blood pressures.  They have paged a DR, but hopefully this is just part of him being so zonked out from his big day.

Given an uneventful night we should be going home in the morning.

I've included a pic from a happier day!