Surgical Update

Prayer Requests:
1 – A quiet night tonight. REST for everyone. Continued improvement from Gideon on his labs.

2 – Successful, quick & easy surgery early in the morning tomorrow!

3 – We are opting in for a study that’s going on right now in 3 different cities for babies 5 months and under to receive a synthetic hormone post op which has many benefits and zero risks or negative side effects. It’s a blind, random study, 50% of the kids get a placebo, 50% get the synthetic hormone. We want him to get the hormone because there are only benefits of healing proven in previous studies with it.  So please pray that he gets that and not the placebo.

4 – Please pray for my big boys. They have been abandoned by their mama since I’ve been at the hospital with Gideon and they are feeling it. I’m feeling it. We all need to hug each other.

5 – Pray for Gideons blood to be healthy. It’s not. We don’t know why…

On to the update………….

Well, you already read about the answer to prayer we had about reassurance regarding the surgeon. That was pretty awesome. Meeting him in person was really awesome. REALLY awesome. The surgeon doing Gideons repair tomorrow is Dr Michael Chen. If you want to know more, here is his page: http://www.seattlechildrens.org/medical-staff/jonathan-michael-chen/

He seems to be an amazing man (of course, he’s head of all things pediatric cardiology and has won multiple awards including Seattles Top Doctor for 3 years in a row and who knows what else) but we loved his personality and his presence, his confidence, we just liked him. He’s a likeable guy :)

The plan is for surgery tomorrow morning. Friday 1/19, he is the first case at 7:30. They are doing a mid line sternotomy (open the chest through the sternum) but only fixing the external structures of the heart tomorrow. The aorta (in 2 places) and the pulmonary artery. He does not have to have his heart opened tomorrow. He will be put on bypass and cooled, have the external structures repaired, hopefully closed back up, warmed, taken off bypass and delivered back to us in great shape. The surgery should take about 3-4 hours, plus the time to prep-start lines-cool, etc so the surgeon expects to be done around lunch time.

I’m learning very quickly that I don’t do what I plan to do up here, time flies by multiple hours in a row and I get absolutely nothing done that I had on my list of things to do (read, rest, walk around, post an update, eat food, take a shower, etc). So, while I would love to say I will post an update about surgery tomorrow afternoon around lunch, I know that’s just not going to happen. Heck, this post you’re reading right now was started almost 24 hours ago and hasn’t been posted yet. So there you go, that’s how quickly you can lose 24 whole hours in the hospital! Lol.

If you want up to the minute updates, and you’re on FB, join his prayer page. That’s where I post the most because it’s quick and it’s easy and I can do it right from my phone. Here is the link:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/158210648110517/

If you want to know what you can do to help, PRAY! Send good thoughts, vibes, whatever positive goodness you want to send to us, we will take! A friend has also set up a paypal gift/donation site to help with expenses of food and gas while we’re here as well as potential out of pocket medical expenses. Here is her post regarding that:

Here is the post my friend made about the donation site:
As many of you know, Kari and Bo Bradshaw welcomed a darling baby boy, Gideon Robert on Sunday. Although a known cardiac anomaly was diagnosed prior to birth, an additional one presented itself hours after his birth. Baby Gideon was transferred to Seattle Children’s Hospital where he is awaiting heart surgery. Several people have asked how they can help? Kari and Bo are the first to recognize the miracle of life and to give their gratitude to God for this blessing. We can ease the financial burden while we await additional ways to serve this incredible family. They are most in need of funds to supplement the cost of food from the hospital cafeteria as well as the cost of gas as they travel to and from the hospital each day. Of course, medical bills also start to accumulate and one has enough to worry about in caring for the needs of a medically fragile newborn without worrying about bills. They are not ones to ask for help, but sincerely would appreciate a small donation at this challenging time. (Thank you for your generosity!!).