Chest closed and Extubated!

This post surgery time has been significantly different than Jadon's initial surgery in Feb.  Jadon came back from the OR with an open chest but was relatively stable.   On Saturday they closed his chest, removed his catheter and stopped the muscle relaxant.   As they started weaning his sedation Jadon got quite agitated.   They kept trying to keep him calm but his blood pressure would get too low.   In one of his agitation phases last night he thrashed around enough that he pulled his arterial line out somewhat so it was no longer working.   Given that they use the art line to continuously monitor blood pressure, and Jadon's blood pressure was very unstable, they needed to get another art line in.  They managed to do that and finally around 1 am got Jadon settled somewhat.
This morning the decision was made that they should extubate Jadon so that he would be able to settle better as the sedation was being weaned off.  So early this afternoon Jadon was extubated and is currently sleeping on 2 L of oxygen through nasal prongs.

Jadon with a closed chest and on nasal prongs.  The other kids all commented on how great Jadon looked!  Much less tubes than last time around!

We are cautiously optimistic that Jadon's recovery from this surgery will continue to follow a more regular path.  We are still unsure about how much heart function he will recover but we are likely not to know for several weeks at least.  Once he is back stable on the cardiology unit we will have to discuss his feeding issues, reflux, g-tube and fundoplication... but for now we are grateful for his steady progress.