Heart Cath Friday?

At 6pm on Thursday night the doctor came in to Tyler's room to tell me that he wanted to do the heart cath on Friday morning! What? We hadn't even decided what to do yet. John wasn't going to be here until Friday afternoon and we were waiting to decide until after we sat down with the doctor. He told me that there was not an opening next week and that if we were going to do it we need to do it Friday morning. He gave me his cell phone number so we could call him when John got into town and ask any questions we came up with.

I got ahold of John after this and he still had to pack everything up and drive all the way down here. He and Connor arrived close to midnight. Two year olds don't do well at midnight. We had a nice screaming fit but he finally fell asleep.

We got over to the hospital at 8am this morning to talk to the doctor about the two options. We decided that the stint is the best option for Tyler and gives us the best chance that it will stay open.  Tyler went back for his procedure at 11am. This one should only last about an hour.

At 1:30pm the nurse called me to tell me that the echo was wrong again and he the clot was fully blocking the SVC. The doctor had called two other doctors to the cath lab with him to try to figure out what to do since nothing was working. At 2:30 the nurse called again to tell me that they were done and were taking Tyler to recovery. The attempts have failed and there is nothing they can do. The doctor would be up to speak with us shortly.

"We failed." Two words you never want to hear a doctor say. He apologized to us that they had not stinted a month ago when he got it open while using the PICC line. Now the blockage is 2 centimeters long and there is no way to get through with a heart cath. The echos that showed "flow" before we went home lied. They were seeing another vein and not the SVC. This will not clear on its own. It is far too big. We are lucky that right now his other vein is carrying the blood. The question remains as to how long this will be able to handle the load as Tyler grows. Also, Tyler still has been having problems eating and with Pleural Effusions which can be made worse by this clot. Right now it appears there is nothing more to do. There could be a potential surgical option, but right now the risk outweighs the benefit for Tyler. We will just have to wait and see.