CARDIAC Cath Procedure
It’s the night before the procedure. Now, this isn’t a big procedure. It’s just something that needs to be done before his Glenn procedure, which is happening three days later. I’m not freaking out. Are you freaking out? But anyways, we have to get up bright and early Monday morning, April 22nd, the day after Easter. I’m talking we have to be at the hospital by 6:30am. But for some reason I just can’t sleep. All I can think is my baby’s going to be in the hospital, just me and him all alone. All day I been trying to put on a smile and be happy it’s his first Easter. Deep down inside though, I’m a mess. I want to cry, scream, throw a fit like why him? Why my son? You would think I would be alright. I mean, he’s already had one open heart surgery before. Plus, this isn’t even the 2nd open heart surgery that’s on Thursday it’s just the catheter no big deal. As a mom though, I can’t help but feel scared for my baby. I literally wake up every hour to just look at him. I get no sleep whatsoever.
So now it’s 4:45am and I’m up getting dressed and my husbands in the shower getting ready to head to the airport to go out of town for work. Baby DeMarcus is drinking his Pedialyte all happy, which he usually is in the morning. We say our goodbyes to dad and head to the hospital. I’m blasting gospel music all the way there. We arrive, check in at the front, and then head to take the train elevators up to the third floor (The cardiac floor). They take us back and get him all prepped in his cute little hospital gown. DeMarcus is playing with his toys and all the nurses keep popping in because they just love to come see his curly hair and he’s all smiles about it. An hour passes as we talk to the doctor who will be doing the procedure, the anesthesiologist, and some other people who will be back there and get all the consent forms signed. By this time he’s pretty fussy. He hasn’t had any milk since 11:00 last night. This honestly is the worst part for me. I hate hearing my little man cry. It’s heartbreaking. Finally, they give him some medicine so he won’t scream bloody murder when they take him away from me. Then, they take him back and I go to the waiting room and just wait for what seems like an eternity. It’s really only about 2 hours and 15 minutes but it was the loneliest time of my life sitting there by myself with no family support no one to talk to just praying my little man would be okay. When he was out of surgery, I was so excited to see him. He was still sleep from the anesthesia when I got to the room but he looked so peaceful sleeping.
Now, fast forward to upstairs. Since he is a baby we had to be admitted for the night just so they could watch him and I’m honestly glad they did. Because a few hours later he started Desating in the low 40s. Constantly it would go up to a normal saturations for a few minutes then desat right back down. This part was the scariest because he had to be put on oxygen, and they kept saying that his lungs were possibly collapsing. There were literally 4 nurses and 2 doctors in the room for the next 6 hours. I’m trying not to freak out because I’m here by myself and I just can’t afford to break down right now. Being a heart mama sometimes you just have to be strong for everyone and you don’t get to feel like you really want too.
They talked about doing a blood transfusion but decided to hold off since he would get blood Thursday. They did x-rays and honestly they don’t really know what happened but he eventually got better and we go to go home the following afternoon.
