Immediate Mountains

Wanted to summarize what King Kilians immediate situation entails, as a few people have asked. So..in a nut shell - 

His surgery involved 2 procedures. The first was a Slide Tracheoplasty. While his one lung functions, he is unable to get enough air to it on his own, which is why he has been on a ventilator since birth. His airway narrowed, which is called Tracheal Stenosis. This is because of the Complete Tracheal rings. The procedure widened the airway.

The other thing contributing to his inability to breath properly has to do with his heart. He is missing one Pulmonary Vein (you have 2 on each side...so technically he's missing three but his anatomy is incomplete to his missing right lung, so there's nothing for those veins to go to anyways). This pulmonary vein is very narrow. He also has narrowing of his pulmonary artery. On top of that - where these connect is very small.

The heart surgery he had widened that vein and artery, and the hope is that where they connect will get bigger as he does.

So the repair of these three things combined should** allow for him to breath. Plus prevent any damage to his heart from increased pressures from all the narrowing.

When they went to ventilate him last night (he will be on the vent until everything is healed), he wasn't responding to it. Hence having to be put on ECMO. The surgeon actually went back in and widened the artery even further after the attempt to move him onto the ventilator failed, but it didn't help.

They checked the repairs to make sure there were no obstructions in his airway, and there wasn't. They also performed an echo to check the flow thru his pulmonary artery and vein, which they found evidence of.

At this point, they believe the swelling is causing the inability to ventilate him. We just have to patiently wait for some healing to happen to further assess, and hope that he sustains no damage to his heart or lung while on ECMO. He is also still dealing with his pulmonary hypertension, so the added pressure from that doesn't help matters.

And the last bit..they're finding it hard to control the bleeding. It was better last time I spoke with them, so hopefully at some point soon it'll be under control. Being on ECMO, his blood needs to be thinned to properly flow thru the machine. So you can imagine how hard that is to manage. In every sence, he basically had to get worse to get better, and we're just hoping he can hold out long enough to reach the better.