cath result news

Maddie's cath went really well and it's always refreshing to hear that the docs were PLEASED with how it went. Not only did she have Dr. Johnston's expertise, Dr. Chun, Dr. Jones (who came by later) and Dr. McMullan were all in on the effort. She was out and into recovery by 5:30 and we were finally able to see her an hour later. Dr. Johnston was able to insert and dilate a balloon thru the cath at the narrowed sites on both her right and left pulmonary arteries. The bottle necked areas with the stenosis (result from scar tissue) were 1/3 of the size compared to the rest of her pulmonary artery (4 mm at the narrowing and 12 mm throughout the rest of the PA). He didn't see the need to place stents since the ballooning seemed sufficient for now and she responded to it. She's currently satting 78% which is high for our girl. Sure beats the low 70's she's been favoring lately :) The area that is narrowed is on both sides of her SVC where the pulmonaries go out to the left and right lung so placing stents in there would only complicate her next surgery. The left PA was worse because her aorta lies right at that spot so we'll see how long it stays widened. As far as the collaterals go, she didn't have any large/damaging enough to coil off. Dr. Johnston's thought was her increased cynosis is a result of the narrowed PA's and a pressure build up into the SVC...not so much from the collateral vessels. The four coils that Dr. Jones put in at last year's cath seem to have stopped any further growth of those vessels. He also measured pressures while in there and was happy with those numbers. We're on the 4th floor now and she's being monitored. If she keeps this smooth recovery up, we should be on our way home tomorrow.

Our little trooper devoured the apple juice, chocolate pudding and bites of my dinner and handled it fine. Yay for no pukes. She was hoarse from the breathing tube, a bit cranky and irritable this evening...totally understandable. Her puncture site at her neck bled quite a bit but other than that, she's been pretty good. She is now sleeping and content in her hospital crib...but will be interrupted soon for a chest x-ray and labs. It's true that you never get any rest in a hospital.

Thanks for your love and prayers today! Here's a couple of pics from our day...

Miss Mooms before being called back to the surgery center...she was trying to find something to eat in her backpack. She was s-t-a-r-v-i-n-g and kept reminding us she wanted to EAT. She hadn't had anything to drink since 8 am and nothing to eat since dinner the night before. Poor thing...so much for her maintaining 12.2 kilos (that's 27 lbs) Smiley girl after Versed and before surgery. This is McDreamy, oh, I mean her daddy and my McDreamy...hey, the real McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey aka Dr. Shephard) was here at Children's yesterday!
Recovering in our room on Giraffe 4th Floor