Nathan

My grandson Nathan was born with Tetralogy of Fallot, a severe heart defect. He was given a shunt between his Aorta and pulmonary arteries when he was 2 months old as a 'stop gap' until correctly surgery could be done. This would mean that the blood and oxygen would flow to the correct side of his lungs.

Tetralogy of Fallot includes 4 defects within the heart structures:
Ventricular septal defect (hole between the right and left ventricles)
Narrowing of the pulmonic outflow tract (tube that connects the heart and the lungs)
An aorta (tube that carries oxygenated blood to the body) that arises from both centrioles, rather then exclusively from the left ventricle
A thickened muscular wall of the right ventricle ( right ventricular hypertrophy)

He finally had his surgery yesterday (after having proponed 5 times)

Nathan came out of surgery about 3.30 (just over 6 hours). Originally they were going to do the surgery in two parts because they 1, weren't sure how bad it was; 2. didn't know how his body would cope on the bypass and 3. the time factor of having other surgeries to do that day.

Anyway apparently the team were surprised at how well his body was coping and as they had no more surgeries arranged for the day they did the lot.

Ben and Michelle saw him about 3.45 and already they had taken him off the respirator. The staff were very happy with the way he had responded.

They spoke with the Professor who did the op for a quick 5 minutes and he told them that Nathan should not need any more surgeries now. The inside of the heart and the valves were pretty shot and basically he now has one chamber. Ben and Michelle said amazingly the best part was seeing his blood oxygen stats - before the op it would be around 75-80 (when the shunt was in) and 45-50 before the shunt and now it didn't dip below 94 and actually hit 100 a couple of times.
Not sure how long he will be in hospital - we have been told he will be in ICU anything from 3 - 7 days and then in the ward from 1-3 weeks; it is going to depend on him - how quickly he recovers.