Update...

Matthew just finished his first bottle of the day and is resting comfortably this afternoon. His heart catheterization provided some pretty positive news today. After taking a closer look it appears that the narrowing of his pulmonary artery and aorta that they saw on his echocardiogram on Monday is very minimal and no balloon dilation or surgery will be required for either one. The heart cath also showed that Matthew's lung pressures are low enough that his Doctors believe he is capable of handling his Stage 2 surgery instead of repeating the first surgery with a larger shunt.

The heart cath provided some very clear pictures showing the narrowing of Matthew's shunt right where it attaches to his pulmonary artery. The narrowing is due to a build up of scar tissue from the first surgery. This explains why his oxygen saturation declined so much so quickly. There appears to be a general consensus that waiting for the surgery is not an option and it needs to happen this Thursday, but at the same time it's clear that there is some concern over doing the Stage 2 at such a young age and they aren't doing a very good job of hiding it. We were told by one of his Cardiologists to prepare for a 2-3 week stay after the surgery instead of the typical 7 day stay for typical Stage 2 surgeries.

Scratch that....we were just told they are going to do the surgery tomorrow. We'll explain more later.