Bentley surgery update ♥️

Before I was able to update the blog about Bentley’s surgery it got moved up! Surgery was scheduled for November 28. Then on Wednesday of last week the surgeons office called and said they would need to move his surgery later date. However that had a last minute opening on Friday and asked if that would be enough time. We have already been waiting for a couple months so we said we could do Friday! So here I am writing this on my phone from the hospital. 🙂

Let me back up a little bit. The week of November 3 Bentley had a series of tests and procedures to see if he would be a candidate for the double switch surgery. My awesome mother in law came out and took care of Hadley while we were in and out of the hospital that week. He ended up not being a candidate yet, the pressure in his artery still needed to be a little higher before they would consider him a candidate, so we proceeded with our previous plan of just tightening his PA Band.

When we found out our surgery was moved my Amazing mom was able to come right from Provo after she dropped off my sister at the MTC. She has been taking care of Hadley so Alex and I can stay with Bentley at the hospital (today they flew to NM to spend thanksgiving with the rest of my family).We came in Friday morning and Bentley went in for surgery around 2 o’clock. The surgery lasted about 3-3.5 hours then it was an additional hour before we could be with him. The surgery was almost identical to his March surgery minus the pacemaker placement. We talked to the surgeon following the surgery and he said everything went smoothly without complications. He also said that he would be very surprised if in six months he wasn’t a candidate.

After the surgery they kept him intubated and sedated for 24 hours to make sure his heart is tolerating the tighter banding. Those first 24 hours are some of the hardest but we made it through! On Saturday afternoon we were able to take his breathing tube out and wake him up. Since then we have been making small steps. Sunday we were able to take out his chest tube and one of his many IVs. He woke up much happier this morning and the physical therapist came in to help him get out of bed and walk a few steps ( he is still connected to a dozen things so he couldn’t go far). Today we are still waiting on the results from his echo they took this morning to see if he can come off the dopamine. Once he can stop the dopamine we can take out the majority of the IVs and we will be closer to getting out of the CVICU! So we still have a long journey of recovery ahead of us but we are just taking it day by day♥️

Anyway we really appreciate everyone’s thoughts and prayers our way. We have received so much support and love I feel so grateful♥️ I truly believe that Heavenly Father knows us better than we know ourselves and he has put us right where we need to be surrounded by such amazing people.

I will post another post soon once we know more.

💕always the Richards family

Also the staff here is amazing they are really doing everything they can to make Bentley as comfortable and happy as possible♥️