Asher’s Norwood Surgery Report

Asher did awesome today and is now recovering quietly in the pediatric ICU. He should be there for 5 to 7 days before moving to a regular pediatric hospital ward. We were able to visit him for a few minutes tonight and speak with the surgeon and pediatric cardiologist as well as the main nurse taking care of Asher over the next few days. He's doing so great! The surgeon said the surgery went as good as can be expected and that he felt really good about the results. Asher's little system did very well coming off the heart/lung machine, and because he was such a big healthy baby (thank you Jessica and genetics!), they were able to close his chest during surgery today instead of waiting for a couple days for swelling to go down.

He will be on a ventilator for a few days until the fluid in his lungs is gone and until he is doing all the breathing work on his own and they feel confident in his ability to sustain himself. He also has blood oxygen levels on the lower end of things, so they are monitoring that but the trend in his oxygen saturation is going up which is what Asher needs. It's mainly low because of the constriction the fluid in his lungs is causing. Once the fluid clears, his pulse ox numbers will go up even more which means his heart will be getting even more oxygen rich blood out to his extremities.

When we talked to Dr. Iguidbashian, the surgeon, he said a couple times in different conversations to us that Asher's right ventricle is one of the strongest he's seen in an HLHS baby. This will help Asher a lot since the right side of his heart now does the job of both the left and right ventricles. He also told us his tricuspid valve is very strong with no leaking and there is no blood leaking in general with any of his heart (a fairly common issue with CHD babies). The surgeon told us that he he felt very good about the three main focuses of this first Norwood Sano procedure and that Asher's reconstructed heart is functioning very well with great blood flow to the body.

Thank you all so much for fasting and praying for Asher, for everyone who put his name on the temple rolls, and for supporting us through all this so far and going forward. We have felt it very much especially today. We have a lot still left ahead of us, but like President Monson has said, "The future is as bright as your faith." We feel your faith and know ours will see us through whatever may come.

Here is a picture of Asher recovering in the PICU: