Another Cardiology Visit

Well, we were sent home after today's cardiology visit rather than ending up back in the hospital, so I guess it was a good visit. Again, nothing really surprising from this visit. We were told that the team in Boston wants to do more testing before they will be able to determine if there is anything left that they could possibly do from a repair standpoint for Lynnea, so getting a trip to Boston lined up "sometime soon" is in the works because the testing would need to be done there. The stuff that they will most likely do is stuff that Lynnea has been through before (heart cath, MRI, etc.) but the team in Boston has more resources to get the specific type of information they are looking for, rather than having more of these tests done here at the U of M. Specifically they would be looking to see exactly how much of Lynnea's pulmonary veins are completely closed off, and to get a better look at how much and how badly her aorta is obstructed. Even if it turns out that there is nothing they can do from a repair standpoint, it would be useful to have this type of information when she is being evaluated for transplant as well, so regardless of the outcome, it probably wouldn't be a waste of a trip. The plan would be to go out to Boston for the testing, and if they determine that there is a repair that the surgeon there would be willing to attempt, we would end up staying there for surgery, which could mean a very long stay considering how long Lynnea typically takes to recover from her major heart surgeries. So, now we are working on getting everything approved from a Medical Assistance standpoint to make sure that the trip would be covered; once that is all in place, we can go. I'm assuming that since Dr. Kochilas had us schedule another follow-up visit with him two weeks from today, he doesn't anticipate that we would leave before then, but I'm also guessing that it might not be long after that when we would go. Lynnea also had some labs drawn today to assess several things, including her antibody levels as a part of evaluating her for transplant -- we are moving forward with that evaluation right now as well so that we have a realistic view of what all of our options are.