Welcome back to Noah's blog! Thank you for following us through our journey and for your continued thoughts and prayers!

I know it has been a long time since we have updated Noah's blog. We will be updating on a more regular basis for a while from here on out.

A week from today, our sweet baby boy will be undergoing his 4th major surgery. This one being the most complex surgery thus far. His heart surgeon came to talk with me the other day about the procedures will be done. It is a TON of information and I will do my best to write as much information about it as I can.

The main and most important step with his heart repair is closing the VSD (the whole between his right and left ventricles). The way he described that procedure is he will kind of make it a tunnel to Noah's pulmonary artery instead of patching the hole and rerouting his PA. He said that in Noah's case, the VSD location makes it easier to do that then in other DORV patients. His next step, he will do a left PA plasty. Basically, manipulating his left PA to open it up, with either a stent or ballooning it open. (There was something else... kind of lost track of my thought... umm....)

He also talked about his right PA and whether or not he will be doing anything with it, seeing as Noah's right lung is so small. Changing the right PA would be extremely extensive and would change the amount of blood flow significantly. He said that he may just leave his right lung alone and focus more on his left 'good' lung and make it as strong as possible. The only thing, he said later down the road, his right lung may start to cause problems, in which case, he would take part of his lung out.

The last step to Noah's repair is his airways. Back in January, Noah had his airway pexy surgery. For his heart repair, Dr. Mitchel will be cutting down the old sutures in order to get to his heart. After the heart is done, they will do a broncoscopy and he will redo the pexy and make adjustments so his trachea and left bronchus are more open. But, if his chest cavity is too swollen after they are done with the heart, Dr. Mitchel will have to leave his chest open and do the pexy and close him up a few days later.

I think that is all the info... that I can remember anyway :)

Noah is the first surgical case that day. And his surgery will pretty much be all day. Dr Mitchel said the heart will be asleep for approximately 3 hours and he will be on bypass until they restart his heart. That is after the 2 to 3 hour prepping of the heart (i.e. cutting the pexy down and opening his chest). Then even longer work on the PA and then the redo of the pexy.

This past week, Noah has been super happy and wanting to play and go on walks ALL day long! It is going to be VERY difficult to "hand him over" to the surgical team and get him back sedated and intubated with a fresh cut down his chest and bed ridden for a while. But I know this must be done so we can continue to have our happy sweet boy running circles around us!