Feeding issues after operation on the heart

Hi There, my son recently at 18MO suffered a brain injury and has been left with brain damage, in the beginning he lost his suck and swallow but recently was signed off via videofluroscopy with a safe swallow, his brain injury is coming along nicely and he has been left with basil ganglia damage. he recently had a heart operation to repair a vascular ring which was compressing his airway and foodpipe,  He had the double aortic arch repaired, he is 18 months old l. The operation went all to plan lasted 3 hours in total, he was intubated at 9 in the morning and extubated at about 5pm, he was in ICU for 24 Hours and home in 5 days. he has got mild tracheomalacia but never required any medication or anything and the stridor seams to have gone except on excersize when its still present which I am told will take some time. Its been 2 weeks since the opoeration and one thing im concerned about is that although his sickness has stopped instantly he can only tollorate liquids at the minute and is gagging on solids.... he had a bad cough when he came out of ICU which has gone now, no temp or anything though. the doctors think he could have picked up a virus and with intubation etc his throat could be soar still, do you have any other explanation, surely nothing from the operation could have made it worse?

Has anyone been through a similar experiance, please help

[HRHSmommy]

My daughter has had many feeding isues since she was born and particularly after heart surgeries(she's had several, was born with single ventricle). She would never gag though, she just wouldn't eat. The sore throat from intubation shouldn't last 2 weeks, especially because he wasn't intubated for very long. I would call the doctor especially since he is only a couple of weeks post op. Does he have a feeding tube? If he can't get anything down, they may at least put the NG tube in(through the nose). I think you should have him checked out as soon as possible.

[daveandjulie123]

Hi, he doesnt have a feeding tube now no... he had one pre op for 4 months but he did really well and we took his NG tube out... now he can only drink fluids