Care4Conway: Surgery Day

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Surgery Day

Conway has been in the O.R. since 7:30 am EST. I was able to gown up and go back with him and stay with him until he fell asleep. That was his biggest fear, that we would leave him. We are so grateful for the anesthesia team for letting this happen. Connie was crying a bit when they put the mask on his face, but after singing our ABC's all together, he was out. There was some issue with the consent form since it didn't say specifically he was getting a new valve. Dr. Bove came up to the waiting area and spent about 20 minutes going over the procedure again and his reason why he may go ahead and replace it along with the conduit. He is using an adult sized conduit, which may prove tricky to attach to his native valve. The fiddling with the connection might actually cause his already leaky valve to leak worse. This will likely give him a better outcome from this surgery. Also, future valve replacements could be made easier by having a uniformly sized and shaped valved conduit already in place. He said there is no reason why he couldn't get a melody valve (via catheter) in the future. He may need to take a baby aspirin daily for the rest of his life. We should be getting updates approximately hourly. Thank you for praying alongside us today.

Here he is in the pre-op holding sniffing all the flavors before deciding on fruit smoothie for his mask.

2 comments:

Jenny said...: Sending thoughts and prayers for Conway today!; August 8, 2012 at 8:00 AM
Unknown said...: We're praying for your family and his caregivers. (We're friends of Lisa Richardson - our 23 yr. old was born with TGV atrium defect and he went thru some simliar surgeries when he was young.)

Brian Mabry; August 8, 2012 at 9:27 AM

Conway's Heart Story

Conway's Heart Story

Conway David Beckemeier was born on March 3, 2007. His heart defects went undetected during pregnancy and he was diagnosed at two days of age with L-TGA, a large VSD, sub pulmonic stenosis and Ebstein’s Anomaly. Just before turning six months of age, he underwent open heart surgery to reroute the bloodflow in his heart. Called the "double switch", this procedure is the most technically challenging for pediatric cardio-thoracic surgeons to perform. The version of the double switch that Conway received on 8/28/07 was called the Rastelli-Senning with VSD closure and sub pulmonic resection. He suffered a grand mal seizure following the surgery that lasted over an hour and had several other post-op setbacks including surgical heart block, which required another operation on 9/18/07 to insert a pacemaker. Following surgery and such a long hospital stay, Conway developed an oral aversion (he would not eat) and he was 100% NG tube fed for eight months. He also lost muscle tone and required both physical and occupational therapies. In April 2008, he had a cardiac cath and attempted balloon angioplasty on his pulmonary arteries that did not work. Although his recovery was very long, he had a solid year or so of being a "normal" kid . Then in May of 2009, it was discovered that Conway was having rhythm disturbances, specifically atrial flutter. His pacemaker allowed it to go undetected for several weeks until he showed signs of heart failure and was admitted to the ICU for a week to be placed on IV heart meds and undergo cardioversion on 5/6/09. He went home and his heart function started recovering when he had another episode of flutter (6/16/09). This time, he was again hospitalized and put on IV milrinone, but he converted back to normal sinus rhythm by himself. At that time he was placed on the anti-arrhythmia drug, amiodarone. On 7/22/09 he had to be cardioverted again for yet another episode of flutter. The following week, he got worse instead of better. His cardiologist did a full work up and it was determined that his aortic, mitral and tricuspid valves were all leaking worse and were felt to be the cause of his heart failure. On 8/24/09 he had a cardiac cath and attempted ablation. The electrophysiologist was unable to induce a single arrhythmia. Then, just two days later, he went into atrial flutter on his own. He was placed back in the cath lab where he underwent mapping and a total of 17 burns were made to try to knock out his arrhythmias for good. The next day, 8/27/09, he had his second open heart surgery to repair his mitral valve called ring annuloplasty. He also had a partial Maze procedure done. His surgeries are performed at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). This time he was discharged just six days later! His Left Ventricular function improved drastically. In December 2010 we noticed he began getting more winded during physical activity. A January 2011 cath showed that he is outgrowing his RV-PA gortex conduit, but he was not symptomatic enough to warrant intervention. In April 2012 Conway’s fatigue increased and an echo at the end of May revealed that the ratio between the right and left sided pressures has gotten too high and it is time to replace the homograft that was placed when he was five months old. He had a cardiac cath on 5/25/12 which confirmed the echo findings. He had surgery on 8/8/12 to replace his pulmonary valve and RV-PA conduit, add an additional pacing wire to his left ventricle, and change his generator to a bi-ventricular model which is shown to preserve function and help the heart muscle pump more efficiently/effectively.