Nothing much has happened in the last week, Daphne was out of town for part of it. She was up visiting her family with the boy. I stayed home so I could save my leave time. Our next set of appointments is Thursday, probably nothing new till then. So I shall leave you with this thought.
Give a man a duck, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to duck and he won’t get hit in the face.
We had two appointments on Monday. Starting with the ultrasound. Everything looks as good as can be expected at this time. We also saw the lungs, the right lung looks like a lung should look. Now I’m no doctor, nor did I stay in any brain boosting hotel with a cheap morning breakfast last night, but it looked good to me. The left lung is not quite so impressive, in fact it was a bit hard to locate, though we are using xray glasses to look at a baby who is still under construction. So there are limitations to what can be seen.
Our second appointment was with the pediatric surgeon. First off, his hands do not shake. Mine have a bit of a tremor to them, they have for the last 6 or so years. I would not want me to do any cutting on anything other than a sandwich. This guys hands were rock solid. We sat and chatted with him and had a nice time, well nice considering the circumstances of our meeting.
We learned a little about how the heart and lungs of a small human creature work. We learned that right now there is a valve of sorts that bypasses the lungs in the whole blood flow process. Since the breathing is being done for her, and she is floating in liquid, her lungs are not doing much. Once she is born there is a pressure change that comes with the lungs filling up for the first time which causes this valve to close and the blood to reroute to the lungs. This valve is what will make the big difference when she is born, if the valve does not close off the way it is suppose to, then the blood will not go to the lungs the way it is suppose to and her blood will not oxygenate. The term the surgeon used was resistance. If the resistance is too high the valve will not close or will not close completely. Just one more thing to add to our list. The ability to perform the surgery, which incidentally is a very minor part of all this, depends on the resistance. Also if the valve does not close they will call for emergency transport to Children’s Hospital or Cardinal Glennon to have her placed on ECMO till the resistance changes and she can be operated on. Or until the determine the ECMO is not helping and there is nothing more they can do.
We saw the Pediatric Cardiologist on Monday morning. I thought 8am appointments were something only the military inflicted on basic trainees… but no it appears that Cardiologist like 8am appointments too. Her heart looks good right now, though, sometimes you will hear that someone did something wrong but their heart was in the right place, well baby girl didn’t do anything wrong but her heart is in the wrong place. The heart is shifted to the right side which is not where it should be, however this is not a major concern. As long as there is space for it to do its job, side does not matter.
There’s that word again, space… as there gets to be less and less space, space matters. Her heart needs room to grow so it can do its job of pushing blood to the entire body. As the body grows the heart needs to grow to an appropriate size for the body it is pumping blood for. If the heart is too small, due to things being in the way, it cannot do its job. Problems can occur, like Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. Though, to be clear, this has not happened yet and it may not happen at all.
We went into this appointment believing that if nothing is wrong now, then the heart is locked in as a known good. This is not true, good now does not mean it will continue to be good. We went into this appointment believing it was a one shot deal and once the cardiologist was happy that we were done with this part of the problem. Alas, no, the problem goes on and we go back for a visit in five weeks.