Monday, September 14, 2009

Echo/Followup Appt News!


So last week Ava had an echo, to check the overall function of her heart, and to also check the placement of the stent that was placed in her last cath, as well as check on that leaky conduit. Ava did really well during her echo, I layed beside her and we watched, "Dora Saves the Mermaids" while our lovely echo tech did her magic. The whole thing only took about 45minutes, and only took that long because Ava's aortic arch is always tricky to see.





Miss Ava doing her cath thing, what a pro...




So a few days later we met w/Dr. Van Gundy to go over the echo results, as well as followup on the Cath and make sure the site was healing well, etc. Ava was definitely healing well, hadn't developed a cough or anything else like that. So we moved on to the Echo. Everything looked pretty good, overall. But the conduit was still very leaky. So he said the next step is presenting her case at the next conference. He said his choice is to leave her be for now, but it is always a "group" decision. Plus it's always nice to have the opinion of many dr's, something I really like about the conferences they hold. He said we could chose to have her lung perfusion now, or we could wait. And in his opinion, we should wait a couple months out. We agreed, let the girl rest and stay the heck out of the hospital, hopefully until next year. The lung perfusion will show him the pressures on each side, and how much more he needs to dilate her stent on the left side. Which he can't do for about 6-9months from now anyways, so we REALLY might as well wait on her perfusion. :) Next checkup with cardio in 6 months, and he would let us know what was discussed at the cath conference. He also briefly inquired about where would we like to have the next OHS done, etc. Even when you KNOW your child needs more surgery, to actually talk about it, makes it real. So I had to take a minute and let my heart catch up with my brain. After that I was okay though. :)



So while waiting to hear how the conference went, I was a little worried, because you just never know, they could of all decided the leaking is too much, and got the got the OHS wheels in motion, set a date right then and there. But luckily, we are going to wait, we are going to do the perfusion scan, dilate the stent, and do another echo, check and see what is going on at that point. No talk of surgery = HAPPY MAMA. I know it is still in the future, somewhat near future, but we have time to worry about all that later. I love time. :)

1 comment:

Carey said...

Sounds great! Little Miss Ava is one tough chickie! And you're a great Mama!