I just got off the phone with Caden’s nurse. I am back home to get Sherry in bed. She has become completely exhausted over the past 36 hours. Sherry is doing well enough physically to be off of her pain medicine now for about 24 hours. Joe and Darla are staying near to Caden when Sherry and I take a break. I will be going back down for a little while tonight to check in on Caden.
Caden continues to make slow improvements. This is a very good sign at this point. He does still have an open chest with several drain lines as well as several ports to monitor pressures in specific places around his heart. He will probably stay this way for a couple more days until the fluid stops accumulating and the swelling starts to go down. The doctors have been slowly reducing the medicine that helps his heart to beat. They expect this progress to continue, but it will not be a fast process. He may be able to get completely off of one of the medicines by tomorrow.
A little history of the events from yesterday. They took Caden off to surgery at about 6:15AM. Caden went through the surgery with no major complications relative to open heart surgeries of this type. He was out of surgery shortly after lunch time. Later in the afternoon the doctors decided that Caden’s blood pressure was dropping enough over a period of time to make them want to take a look with an echocardiogram. They found fluid building up around his heart and was not draining off via the system that was already in place. The doctors opened the incisions on his chest to relieve pressure from the heart and allow for them to remove the excess fluid. The blood pressure did not react as they had expected and they started more medicine to help the heart work harder to get the pressure back up. They did another echo later and found that there was still fluid building up. They investigated and found some non-blood fluids behind the heart. A drain line was placed in a way to allow that fluid to be removed and the heart started picking up steam. That was late last night (approx. midnight I think). Caden has been improving ever so slightly since then.
Please understand that we are getting your messages and have just not had a chance to return all of the calls. It is all Sherry can do right now to balance out taking care of Riley’s need to see his Mommy and being there for Caden. She wants you all to know that she appreciates each and every one of you and will take calls and return them as time permits. Robin took calls for over three straight hours last night. There was a two hour stretch when she never heard the phone actually ring because a new call would come in over call waiting before she could get off another call. Robin, her daughter Andrea, and my nephew Kurt have been awesome the past two days taking care of Riley and your calls. Kurt was especially helpful when he realized he was talking to a telemarketer yesterday evening. Kurt asked the telemarketer, “Are you a telemarketer?” Their reply prompted him to say, “I thought you were somebody important.” He was referring to our friends and family. That includes every person who has taken the time to visit this web site and read this story.
Thanks again. Don’t forget to look at the new pictures. All of our love, Hank, Sherry, Riley, and Caden.