update 4:00pm PST: They’ve woken her up, but she’s still on a breathing tube (so she can’t talk) and the surgeon hasn’t removed the arterial balloon yet. That should be coming up in about an hour. She’s still stable and I haven’t heard of any complications.
2/6/09 update, 10:31am PST: Latest news is that she’s made it through the night and is stable. She’s out of anesthesia but still heavily sedated. The important thing though is that she’s stable and didn’t encounter any serious complications overnight. So no news continues to be great news. Will update as we hear more.
Virginia (Kristi’s grandmother) is out of surgery. For those of you who didn’t know, Virginia had a heart episode of some kind last Thursday night and was admitted to Memorial Medical Center here in Modesto early Friday morning. She’s been needing a heart value replacement for several years now, things finally went from bad to critical, and so circumstances made the decision for her: today she finally got the new valve.
We got home a couple hours ago, after spending the day in the cardiac waiting room. She’s still out; she won’t wake up until sometime late Friday afternoon. According to the surgeon, the valve went in smoothly, but due to some thickening in the heart walls (due to living with the valve condition for a long time) they had some difficulty getting her off the bypass unit. Her advanced age adds an extra layer of risk. But Virginia got through the four-hour open heart surgery and she is now stable and in post-op recovery.
The surgery is half the battle; most of the other half is the first 24 hours. If something goes wrong, it’ll likely go wrong late tonight. But if she can get through the first day and night, odds are she’ll have a long and difficult recovery but that she will recover. The doctors say that this new valve will last her over twenty years.
We’ll update as we know anything. In the meantime, please keep her in your thoughts and prayers. Thanks.