Wyatt Dean Braddock was born on Star Wars Day "May the 4th Be with You" (05/04/2016). And the force has been with him...
This picture was taken by his great uncle Mike Smith from J Michael Photography surrounded by ALL of the needles Meganne used for her blood thinners. Wyatt was 8 days old when we noticed that he was no longer breathing normally. His breathing seemed to be labored and because of
that he wasn't eating well. It looked like he was breathing through his stomach. He would latch for feeding, then he would unlatch to breath and then try again. That night (May 12th, 2016) we took him to the emergency room at Akron Children's Hospital. The hospital quickly took him and did a chest x-ray and EKG. In the morning they did an echocardiogram and found that he had a coarctation of the aorta (narrowing in the valve) and a supracristal ventricular septal defect known as a VSD (hole in his heart between the ventricles). That weekend they took him to do a CT scan of his heart to determine the actual size and shape of the narrowing. The CT scan showed that the narrowing went from 7mm to 2mm in was almost 7mm in length (as shown below):
They gave him medicine to open up a different artery that closes after birth in order to help him get blood to the lower part of his body. They kept him in the hospital on the medicine until a plan was deviced and executed to fix the coarctation at the least. His heart and lungs were working too hard. Since they were working too hard his left lung started to collapse. The doctors decided to control the situation by putting in a breathing tube rather than waiting for his lung to completely collapse. They let us hold and kiss him one more time before the breathing tube, since after they placed it we wouldn't be allowed to. The picture below is right after they put in the breathing tube:
The night of May 19th I did not get much rest. I was too anxious so I decided to go online and continue to write down his story. I also went on Facebook and started to respond to all of the support and prayers of friends and family that we have received. While on Facebook I noticed Pizza Fire was running a promotion for the person who was their 20,000 like on Facebook to receive free pizza for a year. I anxiously awaited for the number to get closer to 20,000 until 4am. Later that morning I was contacted by the CEO of the company saying that we were the 20,000th like. He went above and beyond and spread the positive message and prayers for Wyatt on his page. On May 20th they did a thoracotomy under his left arm to go through his ribs to fix the narrowing in the aorta. The surgery went well. Now they are treating him back in his room in the PICU (Pedicatric Intensive Care Unit) to make sure he recovers well. His left lung hasn't quite opened all the way yet so they still have him on a breathing tube for the moment. The current plan is to have him recover at the hospital then send him home for a few months to gain weight before we come back for a second surgery to fix the hole between the ventricles. We will probably be in the hospital until next weekend (5/28/2016) until he recuperates from the first surgery. We want to thank all of the family and friends that have supported him and us in this tough time. Wyatt has his own page that we have started to archive the entire situation. Wishing Wyatt Well
I have also started a book to tell the entire story. Watch for updates on that.
