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Friday, October 7, 2011

Brad takes over

Hey it's Brad... I'm Crady's proxy blogger while she's at the hospital with Coop. He's doing better, but he's still on about a 1/4 liter per minute of oxygen and can't quite get wean all the way off.  Cooper had an echocardiogram yesterday that showed he has a patent ductus arteriosus.  So today the cardiologist came by the room and discussed how we close the ductus.  He needs cardiac catheterization similar to the procedures 60 year old men endure to correct narrowing in their coronary arteries.  A catheter is inserted in one of the blood vessels in the leg and snaked up towards the heart.
To treat Cooper a device is implanted in the duct connecting the two arteries and it is expanded.  Over a period of about 6 months the duct will scar down around this device and completely seal off the connection between the two arterial circuits.
So all will be well and good once we can have the procedure done.  Herein lies the problem.  Cooper's lungs aren't ready for anesthesia. The cardiologist was quite certain that the anesthesiologist won't touch him until at least a month out from his current illness. So we have to wait.
On top of this, Cooper can't go to school for a month due to the risk of contracting another viral illness.  So he's going to miss out on his therapies for an entire month.  To add to the stress we're supposed to go to Denver for a wedding in two weeks and putting Cooper on a plane and exposing him to everyone between here and Denver with a cold is also too risky. Also, Crady's sister is getting married in a month and we are crossing our fingers and hoping that we'll be able to make that wedding.  AHHHHH!
Well the silver lining is that Cooper's EEG from yesterday looks better than it ever has, so there's that.
At the end of the day he's still adorable and incredibly strong and I love him dearly.

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