Jolianne had a pretty good day today. The swelling she was experiencing is pretty much gone now. She looks back to normal to me. She had another blood transfusion today. The doctors said that it was normal after a heart catheterization. Today they increased her feeding to 17 cc's an hour with 27 calories. Her weight today is 6 lbs 10 oz. I can't believe she is almost to 7 lbs. That is so amazing to me. She has really grown a lot in the past 6 weeks.
They talked to us a little today about what they plan on doing in her heart surgery. They are going to place a shunt in her pulmonary valve to open it up and allow more blood flow to get into the lungs. Right now she has what they call collateral arteries. Basically, you are suppose to have two pulmonary arteries. One goes from your heart into the left lobe of your lung and one goes into the right lobe of your lung. Jolianne created lots of little small arteries that go into the lungs causing the two main arteries to very small. In order for her shunt to work properly they will need to block off her collateral arteries. If they do not do the block, she would have too much blood going to her lungs and that would pose a really big problem. After her surgery, she will recover in the hospital and then be sent home to grow bigger. The second surgery that she will have will be to repair the hole in her heart (ventricular septal defect). They said that the 2nd surgery should be around 6 months after the first. Dr. Sheehan said that this will give her heart time to get use to the new oxygen saturation levels. After that they said that her heart will be completely fixed. We were told today that she only has 3 heart defects instead of 4. They are still diagnosing her with Tetralogy of Fallot. Dr. Sheehan said that her 3 defects were in the TOF family. We should find out on Monday or Tuesday what day the surgery will be. The surgeon is out of the country right now, but he will look at the pictures from the heart cath and see if he wants to proceed with the surgery. If he does not feel comfortable with it then it will be postponed further. We will let you know as soon as we find something out.
With love,
Jeremy and Crystal
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2 comments:
Such informative information :O) Thanks for all the details!
Glad to hear she looks herself again!
Love ya'll
Kim
Thanks for the post. That is a lot of information to absorb. I bet your heads are swimming! At least we have a better idea what we're looking at! We'll keep praying and trusting the Lord to walk by your sides and allow us to help where we can.
With love,
Nana and Papa
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