Update on Sean

I have had a few people ask for an update so after contacting his mom and getting information with permission also to post.

Mom says he's doing great.

July 30th - pre-op testing

July 31st - surgery, 7:15AM goes a tad wrong so the anesthesiologist injects special brain protecting drugs during the crises and after the surgery he's put on ice for 24 hours to protect his brain.

August 2nd they start warming him up and his temperature goes through the roof while his blood pressure falls into the basement.

August 3rd the night nurse defies the cardiologist and takes the arctic sun stuff off of him (this is what was keeping him cold, they kept it on in case they needed to chill him again). Up until this point, we thought we were going to lose him.

August 4th the nurse decided it was time to take him of the ventilator, she turned it down so he was breathing on his own and by that afternoon removed it.

August 5th PT gets him up in a chair for the first time. He's only up 5 minutes and it exhausts him, but he was up.

August 6th he sits up in the bed for the first time.

August 8th he is moved from PICU to the intermediate ward. Still hooked up to IVs and monitors. Over the next few days he is removed from all of his IVs and monitors except the heart monitor. His main problem is swallowing. They have forbidden thin liquids because they choke him so he's on thick liquids and pureed food for the next 2 days. Pureed food makes him gag so we get him a lot of smoothies because he won't eat the food they are giving him.

August 11th he passes his thin liquid swallowing test and the let us go home. We call dad at noon and he borrows the company car to come drive us home. We stop at Sonic and he drinks a smoothie and eats a bite or two of a soft burger and some soft fries. We knew that out from under the watch of the swallowing therapist he'd relax enough to eat.

August 12th we walk 3 times a day for 5 minutes. We drink lots of juice and I make my first smoothie. He eats a PBJ.