Stage 1, The Norwood
Jack was born December 17, 2005 at the University of Utah hospital. We saw him for a split second before he was expectedly taken to the NICU. He was beautiful, pink and breathing fine. He was taken by LifeFlight inside a machine that was montoring his vitals to Primary Childrens Hospital. He flat lined about 2 hours later, and required revitilization and a breathing tube.
On Decemeber 19, Jack had a valvuloplasty in hope of opening up his aorta to increase blood flow and try to encourage the left ventricle to work. Unfortunately, most of the tissue around that ventricle was fiborous tissue and not muscle. It was decided to proceed with the Norwood.
On Decemeber 29th Jack had the 1st Stage of the Norwood. It was hard to send him off not knowing what in the world he would be going through. 4 hours later, the surgeons (Dr. John Hawkins and Dr. Peter Kouretis) informed us that Jack's surgery was complete, and went as well as it possibly could. Jack had the "Sano" version, where the shunt placed in his heart was attached directly to the lung vessels from the right ventricle.
Jack recovered well, and came home on January 13th, with oxygen and an NG Tube. He did so well that he was off the O2 after a week, then off the NG after a month. Thank heavens, because there were too many tricks to the feeding tube and we had made a few mistakes and over fed Jack a few times...
But in no time at all, Jack was just a normal baby, learning and trying new things. He was just perfect.
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