Infant still critical, but progressing

Today's another big day for little Fintan Schiltz of St. Charles.

Doctors plan to detach a machine that has been helping his blood get oxygen while he adjusts to life with the new heart he received Dec. 26.

The 3-month-old still is in critical condition but doing well, according to his father and a spokesman for Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

Mark Schiltz, Fintan's dad, said the ECMO machine was detached Sunday but the new heart did not operate well enough, so Fintan was put back on it.

"They (doctors) are hoping that was because his heart needed a little more rest," Schiltz said.

ECMO -- extracorporeal membrane oxygenation -- mimics what the heart and lungs normally do to exchange carbon dioxide waste for oxygen in the blood.

Fintan has been sedated since receiving the transplant.

"We're still hanging in there and just hoping and praying that everything works out," Schiltz said.

"And we are very grateful for all the prayers and thoughts that all our family and friends and people in the community have been sending our way."

Fintan was born Sept. 18 at Delnor-Community Hospital in Geneva with a congenital heart defect called critical aortic stenosis. His aortic valve was blocked, and the left ventricle, a chamber in the heart that pumps blood, was damaged beyond recovery.

He was on the list for a heart transplant for 12 weeks, spending the whole time at Children's Memorial, much of it on a ventilator (which he managed to pull out) to help his breathing and being fed through a nasal gastric tube.

His three sisters and brother were allowed to visit.

Late Christmas Day, word came that a heart was available from an infant in Connecticut. The operation started the next morning.