Our Heart Hero: Emmett's Second Heart Surgery

For Emmett's surgery we had to be at Primary's on June 28 at 6:30am. They took him back into the OR around 8:30am and said that his surgery would be about 7 to 8 hours. At 9:30am the nurse practitioner came out and told us that Dr. Burch made the first incision. At 12:30pm

the nurse practitioner came out again and said that Dr. Burch was just finishing up and would

be out to talk to us soon.

We were very surprised how fast his surgery ended up being. Dr. Burch was very pleased on how Emmett did and was surprised that he didn't have to clean up very much scar tissue from Emmett's first surgery.

Recovering in CICU!

(Doing an EEG test to check his brain waves.)

A couple of hours after his surgery, Emmett started having right sided seizures. They would come and go through out the day and ended about 8 hours later. They tried different seizure medications and finally found one that would help with the seizures and wouldn't make his heart race. Emmett had a CAT Scan to check to see if he had any blood on his brain that would cause him to have seizures.

The next day after his surgery, they did an EEG to check his brain waves. Later the results came back and his left side of his brain was a little bit slower then his right side. It wasn't a big difference and so they weren't all that worried. The neurology team wants him to checked again once he is out of the hospital and do another EEG and maybe a MRI to see if he'll have seizures in the future.

Heading to the Cath Lab.

Holding Emmett for the first time after surgery, was such a great day for me. It was so hard not being able to hold him and you would just look at him and see that he was in pain and just wanted his mom and dad to comfort him. The looks that he would give us was very heart breaking and would just make me cry every night when we would drive home.

Morgan loved visiting her brother. She would say good night to him every night and blow him kisses and tell him that she loved him and would be back the next day. There was one day we went in and he was awake looking around. Both Emmett and Morgan got excited to see each other. When Morgan started to leave, Emmett started crying. He had the ventilator in and so you could just see him getting sad but couldn't hear him. Morgan looked over at him and started crying and said: "It's ok buddy. Mommy please make him stop." It made and Adam cry to see them like that. They are best buds and love each other to death.

7/9/11

This was the first time Emmett smiled after his surgery. It was a lot of work for him to smile at us, after he would smile he would just be so exhausted and sleep for awhile.

At Primary's they have a Child Life Specialist, they help the patients and families be as comfortable with there stay the best they can. They also have fun things to help out with the siblings that are home to help them feel comfortable with there siblings stay as well. They gave us a questioner to fill out for Emmett and then they made a cute poster with the stuff from the questioner and hung it up on his wall in his room so that the doctors and nurses could get to know Emmett better. With Morgan they gave her a doll and went over the all medical stuff that Emmett had on him and she put it on her doll that she named Morgan. We told her she could take the doll home and play with it. She said: "my doll is sick, so it needs to stay at the hospital with Emmett."

It was so hard when Emmett would give us looks like this. Just reading his face you could tell that he wanted to be held and wanted to go home.

There weren't very many days in the CICU that Emmett would smile. It took a lot of energy for him to smile and play. But when he did smile it was a great day and you knew that he was feeling a little better that day.

Emmett waiting to do his swallow study. Mommy and daddy crossing our fingers hoping that Emmett passes the swallow study. Yay!! He passed with flying colors.

After the swallow study, I got to feed Emmett some baby food. Which he loved!

Giving Emmett a sponge bath.

When Emmett moved to the Cardiac Surgical Unit on third floor, Morgan got sick and couldn't see her little buddy. On the roof of the third floor they have an area that you can go out and play. It was great that Emmett's window was on that side so that Morgan could look through the window and still see Emmett but not be to close to him. She thought it was great that she could look through the window and play pick a boo with him.