3rd Heart Cath Results

All went great! Just as I had expected, things have improved for Harlie since her last heart cath. All her pressures were good and Dr. Moskowitz said that he could see much more lung tissue than last year. So, clearly her remaining right lung lobe is growing. The subaortic stenosis (narrowing of the area below the aortic valve) has remained the same (hasn't gotten worse), which is great.

Dr. Moskowitz is going to send up all the information to her surgical team in DC to see what they want to do. But, both Dr. Moskowitz and Harlie's cardiologist, Dr. Gullquist agree that there is no need to rush her into her third heart surgery, the Fontan. She is still on the small side - just 23 pounds and she'll be 2 next month (Wowza!!!). And they tell me that there's no evidence to support that doing the Fontan earlier is any better than waiting till they are three years old. Plus, with our current situation, going up to DC for heart surgery would be, well... nuts. So, I feel very lucky at how all the timing of everything worked out.

So, it looks like we'll be looking at next summer for her surgery. Hopefully, she'll get a break from surgeries for a while. And if it all works out the way I want it to, she'll be trach free for the heart surgery, which will help for so many reasons.

So, the heart cath was done by 11am and they said that if all looked good they would discharge her at 5pm. That tells you right there how good she's doing because she's not been able to go home after a heart cath before! Anyway, she slept all day and her numbers looked good. We had to wake her up to get her dressed to go home (she immediately signed "Murphy" - it really is so cute how much she loves him). She slept in the car and when I got her in the house she signed "night-night", so I put her to bed. They said that the reason she's so tired is because they gave her a "cardiac cocktail" shot in her thigh muscle, which will take some time to wear off.

It ended up being a nice day, really. I got to sit around, read my book, take a nap with no laundry, or errands or chores to do. Not bad.

Tomorrow Murphy has his follow-up appointment with Dr. Lanning from his surgery last week. Hopefully it is healing the way it should. I certainly can't tell. So, I will feel better after he has a look.

Well, that's it for now. More later!

Take care,
Christy