Life flighted to U of M

After Grant's birth we spent a few wonderful hours holding him and getting to know him. He looked perfectly healthy. During his 3am bath a nurse noticed that he had begun to breath more rapidly and was turning blue. Some tests were run on Grant and we found out that his lungs were 80% filled with blood. We met with the cardiologists and they had him life-flighted to U of M for some tests and possible surgery.

After arriving at U of M they did an ECG and diagnosed Grant with Total Anomalous Pulmonary Venous Connection, with obstruction. They scheduled the surgery for Monday morning and attempted to keep Grant stable for the rest of the day. In the late evening Grant's vitals dropped and they decided that emergency surgery was necessary to save his life.

The 4 hour surgery was a success in terms of reconnecting the pulmonary veins to the left atrium. However, Grant's heart is having trouble recognizing these changes and is acting like the veins are still connected in the wrong places. To compensate, the vessels are constricting, cutting off the blood supply that should be freely flowing between the heart and lungs. As a result, Grant is on 13 medications, one of which is nitric, which keeps the pulmonary vessels open that keep trying to close. The goal over the next few days/weeks is to get Grant off these medications, most importantly, the nitric. If he can get off the nitric it will show that his body is learning to adapt to his new heart and he will be able to begin weaning off his other meds.