Thursday, April 03, 2008
Macy Jane’s Heart Cath Current mood: exhausted
Hmm, where to start? We woke up at 4:30am and were at LeBonheur by 6. They did not call us to go to the cath lab until right at 8, the doctor came around 8:30, and by 9:15 we received the call that they were getting started with the procedure. We were told it would take about a minimum of 2 hours, longer if they had to do some interventions. All in all, it took them 3 and 1/2 hours.
This is the story. She has outgrown her conduit, ALREADY. This was something that we knew would happen, we just did not think that it would be this soon. Dr. Lutterman was able to place a 10mm balloon in it and open it back up, but that is only a temporary fix. He also had to balloon a tiny part that comes off of her conduit. The pressures in the right side of her heart were slightly elevated before he ballooned the conduit, and once he opened it up, the dropped back to pretty close to normal. Thankfully, she did not get the diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension! Praise the Lord for that. The right side of her heart looked great in the size of it, so it is not "failing" in any type of way.
So, where do we go from here? CALIFORNIA baby! Yee-haw, I miss that place SOOOOO much. Do you sense the sarcasm dripping from my words? The information that they gathered from her heart cath will be placed in a file and sent to Dr. Hanley for review and get his recommendations for treatment. The most likely recommendation is to have the conduit replaced with a larger one that will hopefully last her for 2-3 years. *hopefully* At first I was upset, but her outgrowing the conduit is actually a good thing I guess, because that means that her arteries are growing, which we were told today that they have definately grown. It will probably take 1-2 months to hear from Dr Hanley and so it will probably be late summer when we return to CA. It is considered an elective surgery, and they typically like to do this type of surgery before cold season/fall.
This does mean that she will have open heart surgery again, but hopefully it will not be as dramatic of a surgery as the previous 2 surgeries. The recovery time is supposedly much quicker than others. So, maybe a couple weeks in CA? We shall see.
Please pray for me and Steve. We have many decisions to make in the very near future, with the biggest being where and when do I return to work. Do we get a secondary insurance for her? I could go on and on, but will not. Just please pray. It wasn’t all bad news. It just stinks that she outgrew it so fast, but God heard our prayers and let her arteries grow!
That is all for now. We are in the ICU tonight, just for precautions. We were able to see her a little after 2 in the recovery room and she was awake and happy and kicking, trying to talk. She has been so good all day long and playing! In fact, it is almost 9 pm and she is still awake She is getting tired, and so are we. Bedtime soon I hope. The new CVICU and LeBonheur is so awesome. I love it! You are able to stay with the babies 24/7, able to sleep in the rooms with them, eat, drink, use their internet....it is pretty sweet. It definately makes the stay much more enjoyable! The nurses that work back here are some of our favorites, which helps 100%!
I am going to go for now and see what jobs are available in the area. Thanks for the prayers, they have really helped and we are SO blessed.
Much Love,
Bethany