May 14 - PDA Ligation Surgery

Maxwell's heart surgery was unsuccessful.

Needless to say, today was a really bad day for us.

The PDA ligation was aborted about an hour into the procedure. After the surgeons began the operation, they discovered that the ductus was much larger than had been indicated on the pre-op scan. They were expecting to close a 2-3mm ductus, but it was actually 10mm – one of the largest they'd ever encountered. There wasn't a clip large enough to close it off. They attempted to ligate it with multiple clips, but after the first clip, the ductus, made fragile from the CMV infection, tore where it joins Max's pulmonary artery and he began bleeding profusely. He lost 1/5 of his total blood volume, but they were able to stop the hemorrhage and replace the lost blood. Fortunately, they were able to keep his O2 levels up during the blood loss, preventing any further brain injury.

We dodged a very big bullet today. We have to wait until Max is stronger to try again to fix the PDA, but he doesn't have the recovery advantage of having a repaired PDA. Now it's a race for Max to recover before the problems caused by his heart defect begin to escalate.

The waiting begins...