Sorry I haven't done an update for a while. Daniel took care of it for us yesterday though, ha ha. I hope you all got a kick out of that. Daniel is doing great, and they have moved him into a room in rehab to start trying to get him strong again. He'll need to be strong and healthy within the next few days, because he is going to have to have open heart surgery. The doctors think they will probably do it on Tuesday. After some diagnostic tests, they discovered that Daniel's bicuspid valve (the one they have always worried about) gets tighter and tighter as his heart rate goes up. When his heart rate gets to a certain point, it closes off almost completely. This valve is going to have to be replaced. (Well, unless Daniel agrees to keep his heart rate low for the rest of his life ha ha - yeah right! he wants to play ball NOW). This is really major surgery and will require major recovery, but after the procedure is finished Daniel should be able to return to a normal lifestyle. We first thought he would just be getting a defibrillator implanted, so this is a little more drastic, but we're glad they have found the problem and are able to fix it. This surgery is actually a fairly common one, and there are rarely any complications. There is a great surgeon we have been talking to who will take care of the operation. We feel like Daniel is in really good hands and that the Lord is watching out for him.
When the surgeon came in to talk to Daniel, he explained all of the options that Daniel would have for this surgery. He told Daniel that he can have a mechanical valve which will never wear out, but the downside is he would have to be on a blood thinner his whole life, which is not ideal for someone as active as Daniel. The doctor said the other options were a pig valve or a human valve. He said the upside of having a valve like this would be that he wouldn't have to take blood thinners. Daniel broke in and told him "the downside is that I would be part pig." Ha ha.
He is starting to really get antsy here in his hospital bed. When they were transferring him to his new room, he pushed his wheelchair there instead of letting them push him. He also found an adult diaper in the ICU room, and put it on over his pants. He wore it the whole way over here to the new room. He got pictures of it on his cell phone too, so someday you can all ask him to see those. :) Daniel has been using his cell phone quite a bit again, but he prefers texting to talking - always has. We did bump him up to unlimited texts for this month (for those of you worried about wasting them from one of the previous stories) and he would love to hear from his friends, so go ahead and say hi! He's back on his facebook account too, so you can send him messages there. I'm forwarding letters and messages I've already gotten. He is SO bored right now! And they took him off the medication that makes him act like he's drunk - so he can't even entertain himself, ha ha. Now he's a little more cranky, and I don't really blame him! He sure does perk up for all of those pretty nurses though. :)
Like my mom said in her post, one of the cardiac specialist who has been working with Daniel stated that he had a 1% chance of survival from this incident. I don't think even we knew quite how serious this whole thing was until he said that. But we know that it was a miracle. All the nurses here call him the 'miracle kid' and are amazed by his story and recovery. So are we! Yeah for miracles!
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It was so awesome seeing Dan last night. I went with a few other girls to see him. We were in his ward last year. He made us laugh the whole time! His mom was getting upset at him becuase he kept talking about scary movies. But we all thought it was funny and just great to have the old dan back. It really is a miracle how much Dan has improved in the last few days. I read this last week and though it was written just for Dan:
ReplyDelete"And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up..." James 5:15