Rafael's Birthday

Today, we were informed that Max would indeed need to have surgery to clip off the PDA. This will allow his lungs and heart to continue to grow and strengthen properly. It’s kind of crappy news to hear, but we were ready for its eventuality. The surgery is tentatively scheduled for Thursday. We have high hopes that it will go well. The bad news days have started, it seems. Hopefully, our spirits, our hopes and our general moods will not be dampened too much by the oncoming onslaught of such negative news. I will be here for Brienne as best as I can throughout this time. I hope I am strong enough to carry us both when necessary.

We went to visit him, and I told him what was going on. He seemed to be ok with the idea and was in reasonably high spirits today, from what the nurses told us. I hope he deals with the extra stress well. I’m already ridiculously proud of his fighting spirit and just hope that he has enough fight in him to go through the procedure without any real issues arising. I am still hopeful, and still trust the people at St. B immensely.

We went there again tonight. He was doing the same as earlier. Not as well as previously, but all these minor hiccups are expected when the PDA issue is still present. Hopefully, his lungs and everything else will strengthen and grow properly once the surgery is done with. Brienne isn’t doing the greatest. She feels like she wants to do more to protect him. There are few things I can say to make it any better though. Hopefully, we get to a point where we start taking this all in proper stride. As of now, everything still seems so surprising to us, and I don’t think we’ve moved on past the initial shock as much or as well as we would have liked to. Hopefully, we will find that necessary strength, and that necessary ability to deal with the issues we face up ahead. Also tonight, Maximilian’s IV got taken out (by him, of course), so we left with the nurse about to put it back in. It’s a possibly lengthy procedure depending on complications, so we’ll be calling later to get some information on how it went.

I called sometime shortly after 11:30pm to see how it went. They had to poke him a few times, but they finally managed to get the IV placed into his scalp, behind his ear. I don’t like the idea of them poking him so much, but what other choice did they have? The nurses hope that his PICC line will get inserted sooner rather than later. They prefer it to an IV as the IV’s tend to overstay their welcomes if they’re in there for too long.