Monday Update

Today did not turn out as we had hoped.

First, when Will's doctors tried to close his chest this morning, his blood pressure dropped to dangerous levels which made them stop the procedure. It was just his body's way of telling us he wasn't ready yet. They will reattempt it sometime soon when they feel he will tolerate the procedure.

Will did have his CT scan, and unfortunately we got some bad news. We got the preliminary results about a 1/2 hour ago from his cardiologist... the scan showed blood in the 1, 2, & 3 ventricles on the lateral side of the brain. From my understanding, the neurologist believes Will may have had a stroke that caused a brain bleed. He told me that there are 2 types of strokes: strokes that cause clots; strokes that cause brain bleeds.

There is no way of knowing what caused the brain bleed; it could have been caused by the surgery, but we will never know.

Will is going to have neurosurgeons look at him tomorrow. They may have to do a procedure where they put in a shunt to drain the blood out of the brain.

An MRI will give us more information, but until his chest is closed and pacer wires are removed, they can't do it. It may be as long as a week.

As far as the long term effects of this brain bleed, I think it will be a long time before they can determine that. He may not show any effects... babies can bounce back remarkably well from this. One thing you have to remember is, humans stop producing neurons at 2 years old. So, if an adult had a stroke, the neurons lost would be gone forever, but with an infant, they have two years to grow neurons.

We are going to talk to the neuro-team tomorrow, and hopefully we will get a better explanation. I hope I got all of this information right... it was kind of a blur since both of us were in a state of shock when he told us about their findings.