Hayden's New Hardware

We had to make a trip down to Anchorage this past weekend to get a heart procedure done for Hayden. We've been dreading the procedure, but it needed to get done sooner rather than later. He was born with a heart murmur and it lead us to find out that his pulmonary duct never closed after birth. The pediatric cardiologist has been monitoring it for the past year and came to the conclusion that it wasn't going to close naturally and we needed to close it because the blood was flowing through his heart twice and it could lead to infection or an aneurysm. We needed to do it while he was young because as they get older then the duct gets more brittle.

So, we flew down to anchorage for the cardiologist to perform a procedure to close it with a coil. He put a catheter into his main arteries through his leg and then inserted a stainless steel coil with what he described as baleen on it into his pulmonary duct. The coil stopped a majority of the blood flow within 10 minutes. We will find out in a month whether or not it completely closed the duct.

We flew down to Anchorage on Thursday for Hayden's pre-op and thought we would stop in at Build a Bear and get him a special animal to bring with him to the hospital. He had a blast running around the store trying to pick out what animal he wanted. He had a hard time picking between the monkey and the puppy and drug them around in circles.

On Thursday night we took Danielle and Hayden to Walking with Dinosaurs, and we all loved the show. It was amazing to see the life size dinosaurs....they were huge and really realistic.

Hayden was enthralled the whole time and didn't take his eyes off of the dinosaurs. Chris bought some popcorn and they both sat there eating the popcorn staring at the stage!!

Friday was a long day, we had to be at the hospital at 7 am and get him ready for his iv and whatnot. They gave him a medicine to help relax him before the iv and the doctor warned us that we will figure out whether he was a mean or happy drunk when he gets older. The medicine really made him act drunk, thank goodness he was a happy drunk! It was really cute, he was being super goofy and was happy through all of the tests and poking and prodding. The hardest part of the whole thing for Chris and I was when we went into the operating room with Hayden and they put him under. We got to hold him through it, but afterwards they put him on the table, and he was very lifeless laying there and the doctor told us to give him kisses goodbye. Ugh, pull at your heart strings. Then we had to wait two hours for the whole thing to be done. The hardest part of the whole thing for Hayden was that we had to keep him laying still and flat for 5 hours after the procedure. It was really hard for an active 13 month old to lay down, let alone not move. They didn't want the clog in his artery to blow out and him to bleed so it was really important. We pinned him down and he cried so hard that thankfully he went to sleep for most of it!

We were discharged on Saturday and Hayden was doing great. He was up and playing Friday night and we all got some much needed sleep. It was a beautiful day so we decided to take him to the zoo. He really enjoyed looking at all the animals and sitting on his daddies shoulders to get an extra close view!

On Sunday he got really sick and the doctor said that he probably picked up a virus from the hospital. Sunday and Monday were filled with lots of clothes changing for me and him and lots of resting. But I am happy to report that today he is feeling much better and is almost back to normal! A special thank you to Danielle for all of her hospitality and for being there for the little H man all weekend! Thank you to everyone for all of their thoughtful messages and prayers. We really appreciate all of your support and for getting us through this :)