Pre-surgery Procedures

We spent several hours at Primary Children's on Tuesday for Jereth to have pre-surgery procedures. In preparation we stopped giving him formula and switched to clear liquids when we got to Mom's. Then at 9:30 am we turned off the feeding pump so there would be no reason to delay the procedures.

Once at the hospital a little before noon, we started out in Outpatient Surgery for him to have the electrocardiogram and echocardiogram. I asked about the plan for his chest x-ray because we had two different letters with different dates for the chest x-ray. When all was worked out we ended up getting all of the procedures done on Tuesday and didn't have to go back on Wednesday like we were planning.



After waiting while the nurses tried to correlate the different sets of instructions, the technician for the electrocardiogram came in. She put a bunch of stickers with snap-like attachments onto his chest, clipped a wire to each one, then ran the test for less than a minute. This gave her a print-out of the electrical activity in his heart that the doctors will use as they plan the surgery.

After the electrocardiogram, Jereth was given a drug to keep his heart stable during the anesthesia for the echocardiogram then we visited a bit with the doctor and the anesthesiologist about what we should expect for the echo and after. While he was anesthetized they drew his blood for the pre-surgery blood screenings and to match his blood for the transfusion he will get with the surgery.

The echocardiogram did not show anything new but was needed to have surgery quality pictures of what needs to be fixed in Jereth's heart. The doctor said there was nothing in any of the tests that would keep the surgery from happening. The only thing that could postpone the surgery would be an emergency case which would push back any non-emergency procedures.

After Jereth had come out of the anesthesia he was very hungry, so we got him started on clear fluids then moved him back to his regular formula diet. He had a urine bag put on while he was anesthetized, but it was still too empty to do any good. They sent the collection jar home for us to put a sample in and bring back with us when we return for the operation.

After half an hour on formula he was released from post-op and we took him to radiology for the chest x-ray. By the time we got done with the chest x-ray and left it was almost 7:00 pm. The procedures all together took less than 2 hours, but the waiting around for one thing or another took up the other 5 hours.