Stella had a routine echo appointment today. Echos still freak me out mostly because at the "routine" echo in June I decided I could handle taking her by myself and we were admitted from the echo appointment to PCH. I am not sure if I will ever decide to go to an echo appointment without someone by my side (today my mom came with us and Stella really appreciated it because YaYa provides her with lots of entertainment!) Let me start this post out by saying that the end result of today was actually pretty good overall, but I wasn't so sure of this throughout the day.
Although her past few echos have looked pretty good and they have continued to trend in the right direction, I still find myself holding my breath while we're in the room and the technician is doing their job. Today I started out calm but quickly became a silent nervous wreck-we have been through enough echos to know the "normal" routine of a 20-40 minute ultrasound followed by transferring us to a room to wait and talk to our favorite Nurse Practitioner, Laura. Today after about 20 minutes the echo tech told us that he needed to show the doctors something and to stay put, he would be right back. However, as a nervous mom I heard SOMETHING'S WRONG. A few minutes later he came back in and said he needed to redo a section to get a better picture. Once he got his picture he once again left the room to show the doctor and left us waiting. When he returned he was accompanied by another echo technician and one of our cardiologists...now I am thinking SOMETHING IS REALLY WRONG! I was quickly told that I didn't need to freak out and they just wanted to try to get a good look at the right pulmonary veins that were baffled in her first surgery (the ones that they have had a hard time seeing the past 2 echos). With the cardiologists guidance they were able to see the veins and were pleasantly surprised that the blood flow looked better than they had expected and they did not see any turbulence or other signs of stenosis (I breathe a sigh of relief about now).
So the summary of her echo today was that her gradiance was a little higher (it was previously a 4 but today it measured at a 7 but they aren't too concerned about this), they did not see any turbulence, and everything else stayed the same. They still want to keep a close watch on her right side so we have another echo in 6 weeks and at some point this year she will probably have a cardiac cath just to get an even better look.
Overall, Stella has a happy heart and she weighed in today at a healthy 16 lbs 10.4 ounces and was slightly over 28 inches long.
Good update Cara. I felt like I was right there in the room with you, in fact I was holding my breath with all the going out and coming in stuff. Stella is amazing and so are you and David. God has certainly got you in his loving arms. Continued prayers from us.
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