Little Tim (not to be confused with Timothy from New Day North) arrived into our care in March, 2015, just two
months old and suffering from serious heart disease. He was so small and fragile that the doctors
wanted to wait to do surgery, but by May he had to be admitted to the hospital
because his heart was so unstable and he needed treatment for pneumonia.
This was not our usual hospital for heart surgeries, but the
surgeon strongly recommended that Tim needed surgery immediately because his
heart function was deteriorating daily.
We were faced with a decision; to go ahead with surgery, or try to have
him transferred to the hospital that we usually use, who were recommending a
different approach. After a long meeting
with the surgeon, we decided to go for immediate surgery, so on May 29 he went
into the operating room.
Even the journey from the PICU to the operating room was an
anxious one, with a long wait for the elevator, the doctor ‘bagging’ Tim to
keep him breathing. Then there was a
long wait while the surgery was underway.
The plan had been to avoid open heart surgery, as Tim was considered too
weak to survive it, and instead to attempt a minimally invasive surgery. When they tried to place a patch, the heart wall
was too thin for it to hold, so they had to perform open heart surgery after
all.
The surgery went well and we had a miracle…Tim was
stable. The doctors did have to leave
his chest open for two days because his heart had enlarged too much to close
it. We waited to hear news about his
recovery, hoping that there would be no infection.
Three days later he was still on the ventilator and had a
lung infection. The days went by and we
kept on hoping…
On June 9 his infection was getting better and we danced a
happy dance when he heard that he had been taken off the ventilator! On June 16 he was back on the regular ward,
with one of our nannies there to take care of him.
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