Hi Folks, Dirk is now resting comfortably, still in ICU. He has had the NG and breathing tubes removed, but is still quite hooked up. They are now giving him a PCA which lets him self medicate for pain. The next couple of days will be tough as he has to do a lot of deep breathing and coughing to clear his lungs. He was in surgery yesterday for about 12 hours and post-op for about 6 more. It was a very long and emotional day. The good news is that his prognosis is very positive. He has responded well to the 're-plumbing' and they were able to repair his leaky heart valve so no prosthetic valve was needed. This was a great joy as the future would have held a replacement procedure every 7 - 12 years if he had needed the replacement valve, as is, he will be good to go for the forseeable future. Dirk is 19 years old. Dirk had a Fontan revision, which involved disconnecting his upper and lower venus blood return supplies from his heart and 'T-boning' them directly into his pulmonary artery. They then reduced the size of his right atrium and basically built him a 2 chamber heart which will now be used strictly for pumping oxygen rich blood from his lungs to his body. Finally they gave him a 'smart' pace-maker which will ultimately fire his ventricular contraction based on the sensed contraction of his single atrium. He will be on some medications from now on such as an ACE inhibitor, a Beta blocker and a blood thinner. Of course I will have a lot of interest in the companies supplying his medications!! They also did something called cardio-ablation which involves using a super-cooled probe to 'scar' parts of the heart muscle in order to prevent rogue electrical pathways from forming that could cause tachycardia. He has not had major surgery such as this since he was 5 years old. His mature awareness of mortality and what lay in store was very tough to take as he was understandably quite terrified. Throughout it all he has kept a stiff upper lip and has been very empathetic of our feelings. I can't express how very proud of him I am. I doubt if I would have the same poise in his situation. Anyway, enough babbling on, I just wanted again to express how much your thoughts, prayers and expressions of concern have meant to the Wieringas, it will never be forgotten, you are all now part of our family history. God bless you and yours, Dirk