Kate is getting a heart – updates

Kate is getting a heart! I’m posting this as a placeholder. Surgery is planned to start around 8am tomorrow, Sunday the 13th. I will be posting updates here throughout the day. Surgery is planned to start around 8am. The latest updates are at the bottom.

Sunday December 13th

9:45am Update

Wow. What a morning so far. Audrey and I went home last night to get some bit of sleep. We had a great over-night nurse that knows Kate well. In light of all our planning the night cardiology dr wanted to d Covid test on Kate at 9pm. We knew that Kate would need a test before surgery but the plan was to do it at 5am when we started other stuff. Luckily our nurse called us (30 minutes after we got home) and we were able to convince the Dr that we were OK with the 5am test. The Dr was trying to make sure there was no delay in the test but we felt allowing 3 hours for a 1 hour test would be OK.

With that out of the way, we got to sleep (kind of) and woke up at 3:45 and headed to the hospital.

The covid test for Kate was tough but she made it through it. She was on edge just about the entire morning.

At about 8:30am she went back to start surgery. She was in a good mood going on her “parade” to the OR door! It was reassuring to see.

Audrey and I sitting and reflecting in our room. They are letting us stay in our room for right now. Kate will come out to another room but with the floor pretty empty, for now we don’t have to pack up!

Lots of emotion and reflection right now. We are getting good updates from the director of the heart failure team who is in the room for the procedure. Audrey and I don’t know anything about the donor at all at this point.

More soon.

12:30pm update

Just heard that the donor heart is here, Kate is open and on the bypass machine. The swap has started. All total they are expecting the procedure to take 8-10 hours from the start, around 9am.

1:40pm Update

Kate’s new heart is in and beating. All is going well for the most part. One of the heart failure team staff came and brought us some EKG graphs of her very first heartbeats! Excited news! We still have quite a bit more time before she’s out and we can visit but this is exciting!

3:05pm Update

Just got an update from the heart failure team. Kate’s going to be on a heart-lung bypass (ECMO) for a few days here. The new heart is pumping and working but it’s struggling to deal with the increased pressures in her lungs that were a result of her bad heart. Her new heart will still be working while her lungs remodel. This will be for at least a couple days. Hopefully she will be off things in a few days but for now, she needs it.

Ugg. Rollercoaster.

4:05pm Update

Just finished talking to the doctor who performed the transplant. Talking to him we are more hopeful. The heart may have been OK with out the bypass machine but they are taking things very conservative approach to things. The bypass machine is working on a very low flow, meaning the heart is doing a lot of the work itself and they are thinking that within a week or so we should be off it. One fear was would she need a lung transplant now too but everyone is saying there are no signs that is something to consider at all.

Talking to the director of the transplant team as well, he was very positive. We’re feeling better about this now. Still lots of emotion but we’re super happy with the team here and the updates they have been providing.

Kate is out in her new room on the ICU side. They are getting her settled now and we should be able to go see her within the next 30-45 minutes or so. She will be completely immobilized and out all while the bypass is in place.

8:00pm Update

This will be the last update for today and this post. We made it home to get a good night sleep.

Kate is stable and completely sedated tonight. Kate is a fighter. She’s doing very well on ECMO. We got to spend some good time in the room with her. The doctors are all very optimistic about her status but we just have to give it some time. Kate had a very bad heart and the surgery went as well as possible considering that. Kate’s in good hands now.