Today’s cardiologist appointment didn’t go as well as we hoped :-(
Last 3 days we’ve noticed Abi started breathing a bit faster. Well, most of the time it was ‘a bit’ faster, but sometimes the rate was double what it used to be after the surgery. Since it was just 2-3 days to the appointment we decided to wait until this morning.
The appointment started as usual. Weight check, Abi gained a bit over 1.5lb, which is great. Length check, she grew one inch which is good and saturation – 99% which is perfect. Then echo. Abi did great during the echo, watching TV and being fascinated with the monitors. After all this was done we talked to Dr. Greene. One of the things noticed on the heart echo raised some concerns and if not the additional information from us, maybe we would just watch it for some time. Unfortunately, it seems to be directly connected with the breathing rate. Basically, one of the pulmonary vessels that was cut during the repair 2 months ago, while healing is scaring inwards, obstructing blood flow from Abi’s lungs back to her heart. This wouldn’t be too bad for now, if not the fact that it increased the pressure in her lungs and heart, causing lungs stiffness, accumulating fluids around lungs and making her work harder to breath.
Dr. Greene, Abi’s cardiologist, discussed this with the team in Atlanta and they decided it wouldn’t be smart to wait even one month, so they will talk about it more, call us on Monday and most probably will want to see Abi on Wednesday next week. Yes, next week.
There are two possible ways to deal with it. If it’s only possible, they will try to fix it with a cath. If they can get to this place, they will inflate a small balloon in this part of the vein and this should resolve the issue. If it’s too dangerous to get there with the cath, or impossible to get there, then they will need to do another open heart surgery :-( They will have to open her up again, put her on the by-pass machine, stop her heart and repair this vein.
There is no comfort in knowing this surgery would be simpler than the first one; the risk is the same; the pain is the same; her fear will be the same.
Today, with Dr. Greene we were looking at her scars and talking about how wonderfully she healed.
She just healed.
