Echo Results

Oh the fun of a sedated echo! Ash was not even slightly cooperative today. We were the first appointment (yay! don't have to starve my baby for too long!). However, being the first appointment also meant that I had to wake up at 6am, get showered and ready, get the kids ready, and be out the door by 7. It also meant missing out on taking Jon to his first day of preschool this year (boo). And, although we woke up at 6, and left the house at 7, we still managed to be late for our appointment (MAJOR traffic at the University today). Oh well.

We warned the sedation team that Ash is VERY difficult to sedate. After 2 pokes for the iv (ouch!), they started him on the strongest sedative they could give him. And then had to up the dose. And give him ketamine. Finally he fell asleep, we grabbed breakfast in the cafeteria, and got back in time for them to finish up the echo. As soon as they were done, he woke up (not good!). He was supposed to sleep for 2 hours- the echo only took 30 minutes. Hmm. He was grumpy and loopy. And wanted to walk, but couldn't. It took about an hour to wait to speak with the cardiologist about the results, and 2 minutes for him to talk to us!

The results: Asher's echo showed the severe leak of his pulmonary valve, and the narrowing of his main trunk of the pulmonary artery. We expected this. However, it also showed narrowing in the branching section of his pulmonary artery. When he had surgery in Stanford last year, they put a patch in his branching pulmonary artery, in order to widen it and allow for easier blood flow. However, what has occurred is that on either end of the patch, his artery has narrowed. This is affecting the blood flowing to his lungs, and is also creating pressure on his pulmonary valve, which caused the valve to go bad so quickly.

So what do we do? They can't fix it during his open heart surgery, because of where the narrowing is. So, in the next 2 weeks (we don't have a date yet)- before his OHS, he will have a heart catheterization done. They will place a catheter through his groin, into his heart, and balloon open the narrow sections of artery. This needs to happen prior to surgery, so that we do not have this same problem again with the new valve. More fun for us! I will repost when we get a date.