Monday Doctor's Visit

Today Lynnea went in to the U of M for her weekly check-up and echo. The news was mixed. The bands that were placed on her pulmonary artery still look good (there was a slight concern last week that they are getting a little tight), but there is some leaking going on with the valve between her right atrium and right ventricle (the top chamber and bottom chamber on the right side, or "good" side, of her heart). This is a symptom of heart failure; Dr. Gruenstein worries that the right side of her heart is working too hard and is not handling the strain very well. There also appeared to possibly be some blockage of the stent that was placed in her PDA. This blockage could be the cause of the extra strain in the right side of her heart. On Thursday we will bring her back to the hospital and Dr. Gruenstein will perform a heart catherization -- he will send a very small camera up through a vein in her groin to look and see if there is anything they can fix to improve her heart function until the second stage surgery. He says that they have seen this problem with one of the other three patients that also had a Hybrid-Norwood procedure, and they were able to easily fix the problem by placing another stent. In the event that they are unable to find the cause of the problem and fix it on Thursday, we will be looking at going ahead and having the second stage surgery performed very soon (much sooner than any of the doctors would really like) and hope that Lynnea is able to handle it.