7/23/15 update

Today we went to Children's Hospital as is normal for us on Thursday mornings.  Then an LVAD coordinator from the UWMC called  to ask us to come in to sign consent forms needed to see if we would be accepted into the LVAD clinical trial that we mentioned yesterday.  We signed the papers and then found out that Dr. Masri wants John to be admitted Sunday morning rather than Sunday between 3 and 4PM.  The UWMC will let us know later what time they want us.  Apparently the idea is that if John needs a balloon pump to help push blood around and make the surgery easier, they can insert it on Sunday rather than Monday.  The pump goes in though the femoral artery in the thigh and it will stay in until the LVAD is installed on Tuesday.  That means that John will be on bed arrest as the leg can't or shouldn't be bent with the pump in the artery.

After we left and before we even got home, we got the call from the hospital that we were accepted into the trial and would be receiving the Heartmate III, the newest pump and the one we wanted.  John will be the first one implanted from the UWMC. There have been approximately 100 placed in the United States.  The doctors and staff seem as excited about it as we are.  After we were accepted to the clinical trial, it was a 50/50 random chance to get the Heartmate III, the other would be to receive the Heartmate II.

We went home for about an hour and then went to Swedish in Edmonds for our last visit with Dr. Broudy who has been John's cardiologist  for the last 19 years.  It was tough to say goodbye to him and to Donna who has also cared for John for 19 years.  The UWMC wants to manage all aspects of John's heart devices and that makes sense.  Still it was hard.

Dr. Broudy went online and looked at test results from the UWMC and was in total agreement that now was exactly the right time to do this procedure.  It was very reassuring to hear it from him.  He read some of the UWMC results aloud and while we knew that there was right ventricle regurgitation, we were unaware that it was considered severe.  That is likely the reason for the sudden lack of energy that John has experienced the last several months.

It was a good day.

Colleen and John