Cardiology

What an interesting trip we had today at the Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City. We had two appointments which were about seven hours combined. They were so kind to call the audiologist to let them know that we would be late to our second appointment so we could go eat some food.
We met with the cardiology clinic first. Hannah had an EKG and another echocardiogram. This was Hannah's thrid echo but there was something new discovered. She has already been diagnosed with Tetralogy of Fallot(ToF), which means that there is a large opening between her right and left ventricle. Today they noticed that there may be an aortopulomary window defect which I think means that the aorta and pulmonary arteries are attached through a hole between them both. They aren't 100% certain that this new discovery is happening so they ordered a catheter for next Friday. The catheter will enter her body near her groin and make its way up to the heart. This catheter will take video, pressure readings, blood samples and probably a million other things. They plan on placing a dye in her blood to watch where the blood flows. This will help them see if there is a hole connecting the two arteries.

Due to this new discovery her surgery may be as soon as a couple of months instead of the 6 to 12 months that they would wait if it were just ToF. The sooner she has heart surgery the sooner she should be able to get off of ther G-Tube (feeding tube) if everything goes smoothly. Mom is totally for that. The G-Tube in theory is great but in practice is extremely inconvienent, however it is still necessary for Hannah's situation.

So after 4 hours with several nurses, a nurse practitioner, and a cardiologist we were done. Luckily my wife was determined to figure out what was going on. At first I thought she was going to rip the nurse practitioner's head off, luckily she was able to keep herself calm and because of her due diligence Sam helped the people at Children's Mercy Cardiology get up to speed with Hannah. Sam got answers. They didn't know what was going on with Hannah, which upset my wife (for good reasons too) because she didn't want Hannah to get lost through the cracks of the system. After everyone was on the same page things went much more smoothly and we ended up really liking the nurse practitioner and everyone else that was helping us.