Good morning family, friends and neighbors.

As many of you know, my husband Kyle had a repeat open heart surgery procedure done on June 4th. The procedure was to complete an aortic root replacement to remove a large aneurism at the base of Kyle's aortic root and replace a previously placed bovine valve with a longer lasting mechanical valve. While they were able to complete what they went in for successfully, they did have many complications. The scar tissue left behind from Kyle's first surgery was much thicker and more complex to get through than they had anticipated. The difficulty that this presented caused Kyle's blood pressure to drop dangerously low and forced the surgical team to move much faster to get Kyle on to bypass. During that process, Kyle had very minimal oxygen and blood flow to his brain until they were able to successfully hook him to bypass. Until Kyle is awake they won't know if he has any brain damage, although his surgeon is relatively confident that he will not as he is responding to commands and to physical factors during nursing procedures. On top of the complications that had already arisen, they did have a great deal of trouble with Kyles lung function. For some reason, his lungs were not producing oxygen adequately and his CO2 gases in his blood were significantly high as a result. The surgical team tried several things to fix that, however, he did end up being put on an ECMO machine to oxygenate his blood for him. He is still currently on that and as of now, that will likely be one of the last things he comes off of. Kyle did require several blood transfusioms and a great deal of fluid, but they did stabilize him and the surgery was ultimately successful. The aortic root and aneurism were removed and replaced with no other complications, as was the valve. His surgical team did also place a temporary pacemaker, which is standard procedure when a mechanical valve is placed. We will know if that will be permanent once he is awake and doing more on his own. With the complications that they ran into, Kyle was in surgery for nearly 15 hours.

Due to the length of the surgery and the minimal ways a patient can be placed while doing a surgery of this caliber, Kyle did also have a complication with his right forearm that is known as compartment syndrome. This was addressed immediately after he came out of his heart surgery and a vascular team came in and completed a procedure to release the pressure in his muscles from the compartment syndrome. This was successful and his arm is responding and slowly returning back to its normal state. They believe that they caught this in time before it caused any permanent damage to the muscular structure of his forearm, but until he starts moving it, we will not know for sure.

While Kyle is not awake yet, that is not because his team does not think he will wake up. He is being kept sedated at the moment because his body went through a great deal of trauma and more than they anticipated. The current plan of his surgical and CVICU care team is to begin weaning him down on medications today and make sure that his body will tolerate and maintain appropriate levels. If they are able to keep him steady today, his surgeon is hopeful they will be able to reduce all sedation, wake him up and remove his breathing tube and possibly a chest tube later today or early tomorrow. Once his breathing tube is out and he is steady, they will give him a few days to recover and then begin to wean him off of the ECMO machine. Once that is out, he will likely remain in CVIVU a few more days to make sure everything remains steady and then he will be transferred to ICU for a few days of monitoring before they consider releasing him to go home.

We are very grateful for the amazing team at UNMC caring for Kyle. They have been very thorough in explaining things to me and answering any questions I have and they are giving Kyle excellent care. Kyle does have a much longer and more difficult recovery than we were prepared for. I don't know at this time how long we will be in Omaha for, but I will be here with him every step of the way. I have a wonderful support system at home that is caring for our kids and animals and taking care of everything at home so I don't have to worry too much. I am able to focus on Kyle. My stay will also be longer obviously so I can be here to help, support and cheer him on. I am able to stay at the Nebraska House on campus at the hospital and while it is much less expensive than a normal hotel, it isn't free and my bill is increasing by the day. We will also likely have several more follow up trips to Omaha than we originally anticipated as well. This will also mean a longer amount of recovery time before Kyle is able to return to any kind of work and he will require quite a bit of care and assistance from me, making it unfeasible for me to begin any type of work. However, bills at home don't disappear when families go through events like this.

If anyone would like to donate to help with the increased expenses we will be facing during Kyle's recovery, we would greatly appreciate it.

Kyle is in still in a very critical state and isn't necesarily 'out of the woods' yet, but he is progressing very well. We are both thankful for all of the prayers and support we have gotten