June 7, 2009

So we made it through another weekend, dad is still waiting, they had a heart for him yesterday but it was too far away so it would not have been viable by he time it got to Boston, so we continue to wait. We met with the surgeons and heart failure teams on Friday and they were considering doing a VAD surgery for later this week, but things have changed a bit since then. VAD is a ventricular assist device which is portable life support, meaning he can get out of bed and move around but NOT leave the hospital, this is a bridge to transplant. However he started to respond to his new medication so they may hold off and just transplant when a heart becomes available. The other problem we have with the VAD is if they have to heavily transfuse him during surgery he could build up antibodies to the blood and that severely limits the heart he could receive.