The Next Surgery

I've had several people ask me what this next surgery entails so I thought I would write a post on just that. Of course in terms we all can understand. Even for those of us who supposedly know what it is going on it's amazing how much we really don't know or understand. Of course if you ask Amy she will tell you she knows exactly what is going on, I go to her for clarification. To think I once set the curve in a pre-med class in college. ; )

This next and what is the final 'planned' surgery of Mason's journey is called the Fontan procedure. There is a little more to it than that but I will keep it at that. This next surgery will reroute the blood returning from the lower half of Mason's body through the heart so that it goes straight to the lungs for oxygen. Currently that blood is mixed with already oxygenated blood and gets pumped out to the body. Thus the reason Mason and HLHS babies like him have lower blood-oxygen levels during the first few years of life. Obviously the catch is this blood is being rerouted through one-half of the right side of his heart. As the left side of his heart does not work. This surgery will essentially complete 'asking' the right side of his heart to do everything including pumping blood out to the body which it was not designed to do. We can only hope and pray it can. We also need the pressures in Mason's arteries and lungs to be ideal before he can have this next surgery. So please keep him in your thoughts and prayers the morning of his pre-op cath. As that will tell us everything. Asking these little hearts to function in this manner is asking a lot. This is the reason they do this reconstruction in 3 different stages over the first few years of life.

Hope that helps................