WHAT HAPPENED????

HOW IT ALL STARTED….
On Friday afternoon July 9, Matt was having some chest pain and lots of pain/tingling in his legs.  He called 911 and was taken to the Catholic Medical Center in Manchester.
When he was assessed in the ER they found that he had an aneurysm on his aortic arch. Friday evening he had emergency heart surgery to replace his aortic valve, his aortic arch & the bases of the three major arteries off the arch the feed his brain. He got through the surgery and was in very critical condition on Saturday. Sunday morning he needed to go back into surgery to do a bypass on his femoral artery as he started to have no circulation in his left leg. He remained very critical for the remainder of the day.
UPDATE FOR MONDAY 7/12/10
Matt is doing better today. He is moving his feet, which is great b/c they did a femoral (leg) artery bypass in his left leg yesterday (Sunday) morning. The bypass repaired a tear in the artery, so we were concerned about the function of his leg but everything is working fine today. He is moving more (still sedated) but he will respond to voice & touch and he will nod or shake his head if asked questions. He still has a breathing tube in & it will be in for a while, however that is ok - his lungs are fine the tube is just in so that he can rest and his body can concentrate on healing the other parts that need to heal. Kidneys are not working that well right now but they are still working and for now they aren't going to do any dialysis. His chest x-ray & kidney ultrasound both came back normal. More good news for today!
UPDATE FOR TUESDAY 7/13/10
Things were really good today! Matt had his eyes opened a lot and was very responsive. His nurses say that his heart is in great shape. His blood pressure is pretty stable and he is on very minimal blood pressure meds. He still is fully breathing with a breathing tube but having him on the tube allows his body to rest and heal. He had a round of dialysis today to clean his blood some and hopefully give his kidneys a rest & time to heal. That is really his biggest hurdle right now. Overall a really great day!
UPDATE FOR WEDNESDAY 7/14/10 M
att is no longer on any blood pressure meds! (which were really all the meds he was on aside from his sedative meds). He went through another round of dialysis today. The surgeon was in this morning to remove some fluid in his lungs which has occurred because of all the fluid that was pumped into his body during and days after the surgery. They were able to remove all the fluid and he/his BP tolerated the procedure very well. They are continuing to do “Aquapheresis” to remove excess fluid that is in his body. He's taking 8 breaths on his own and 10 with the machine. Good day so far!!!