Echo Follow-Up

For whatever reason, when the boy's echos were scheduled, they didn't get scheduled to see the cardiologist immediately afterward. I guess that is typically the way they do things in this office. So they were going to try to schedule them to be seen at their satellite clinic in Walla Walla where they are supposed to come once/month. However, for some reason, they were not going to be coming to Walla Walla in August or September. So, we ended up having to schedule to see the cardiologist in the Tri-Cities for Wednesday, August 8. This is about an hour away from where we live vs. the three hours it takes to get to Spokane.

I figured this would be a standard office visit with the cardiologist and they would tell me that both the kids were doing well and they would see us back in a year for another echo. But that's not quite how the visit went...

The doctor began with Kyler and said everything looked really good in his echo. He said congenital heart defects are never cured, but he said Kyler's is as close to being cured as is possible. That was great news! I was so happy to hear that! He said he could see the small amount of pressure in his pulmonary valve which was left intentionally when it was ballooned open. But he really liked what he saw and said he would see him again in another year. Good news!

Then we got to Caden. The story there was not quite the same. He told me the aorta looked good where it had been repaired so that was good news. But he said there was a small ASD (atrial septal defect) he wanted to watch. This was news to me! I had never been told Caden had an ASD. He said it looked like it was small and that it probably wouldn't be a big deal. If it was an older person, they probably wouldn't do anything about it except keep an eye on it. But since Caden was so young and had other complications, he said we should monitor it and it might eventually require surgery.

I know that many things can be done trans-catheter so I quizzed him on the possibility of doing a repair that way. He said it appeared that based on its location that it probably wouldn't be an option because it was too high on the atrial septum. He said he really didn't feel like anything was critical at this point and that he didn't need to see us again for another year and we would do another echo at that time. The conversation was a lot longer than this, and I really drilled into him to find out more about this new information. But he really didn't seem to be concerned so I finally let it go and accepted that we would look at it again next year and go from there.

It is so discouraging to receive news like this when you are so unprepared! I had no idea there was anything else wrong with Caden's heart so this came as quite a shock. At this point, we know there is the potential for another surgery but hopefully that won't be necessary. Time will tell. Please keep us in your prayers!