Post surgery complications.
Update: I was hoping for a big update today from neurology to see how bad the strokes were. He had all his brain testing and I just spoke with neurology they explained all the strokes and it’s a lot of them in multiple places.
They don’t have a clear path of recovery because they think him not taking a big hit is promising that’s better to have small strokes than a big one and he is on medication for seizures and to prevent more strokes but they can’t promise anything since this heart surgery was so long.
I expected to get more of a clear answers of when he’ll be able to fully wake up but they don’t really know. They basically try everyday to lower sedation to check his reflexes and see where he is at until he meets criteria to get the tube out but today he already didn’t so we wait to see another day.
He said stimulation is helpful and all that. Everyone is very hopeful but everyday is another day he is here is hard.
My husband 60 M was diagnosed with having a bicuspid valve in December 2025 and also an aneurysm. After doing our research and getting a second and third opinion, we chose the facility and surgeon/team we felt most comfortable with. His surgery to replace the valve and an aortic root replacement was last Thursday and things did not go according to plan. They replace the valve but the aneurysm was bigger and the tissue was very unstable (they’ve suggested genetic testing because they suspect he could also have a connective tissue disorder or something like that) and he bled a lot. The surgery was supposed to be 4-6 hours but it ended up being 10 plus and they couldn’t close him for a while because his bp was too high. He was on ECMO but I don’t know how long.
He has been in cardiac recovery since Thursday night, still intubated because every time they try to wean sedation he becomes agitated and can’t follow prompts. He can barely follow some commands but not enough to get the tube taken out. Now they think he has had small strokes all over his brain, they’ve done CT scans and EEG, he is getting an MRI soon. I’m trying to stay hopeful if anyone has experience with this, it would be helpful.
We knew recovery was gonna be brutal but never pictured complications like this.
TIA