2nd Opinion

After much prayer, Greg and I felt we needed to get a 2^nd opinion on Caden's condition. According to the research we have done, the person who has done the most repairs of Scimitar Syndrome in the US is Dr. Spray at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Even though we are short on time, due to surgery being scheduled for April 9 at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford (LPCH), we decided it was what we needed to do.

I called Dr. Spray's office at CHOP and talked to a referral nurse there. She was very helpful in letting me know what he needed in order to do a review of Caden's case. I got right to work getting the appropriate medical records sent to her via fax or mail. She told me it could often take a couple weeks after getting all the records before Dr. Spray has time to review the case but she would see what she could do to help speed it along due to our surgery date.

On March 13, I got a call from the nurse telling me she had gotten almost everything and went ahead and had Dr. Spray do a preliminary review because he was going to be out of town the whole next week. Unfortunately they still hadn't received Caden's echo and MRI from LPCH. They had received the echo from his cardiology office in Spokane and used that. The nurse told me based on his preliminary review, he agreed Caden definitely needed surgery soon. And the second thing he said was he thought we were in very good hands at LPCH and he wouldn't change that.

We felt this was a direct answer to prayer because we hadn't specifically asked him whether he thought we should have surgery at CHOP instead of LPCH. But we had been praying to have a clear answer to the question because LPCH has only done a handful of Scimitar cases in the last few years. And, Dr. Spray has done over 75 in his career. However, since he answered a question we hadn't even asked him, we felt it was the answer God was providing to us.

In addition, once he receives the echo and MRI from LPCH, he will do a more thorough review of the case and will likely make a recommendation as to the type of repair he would do. There are a couple different methods used and I would like to know his opinion on which method he would use. That might influence the surgeons at LPCH one way or the other and could be very beneficial.

At this point, we are continuing forward with surgery on April 9 at LPCH. This date is getting very close very fast! It seems like just yesterday we were being told about the potential for something additional being wrong with Caden's heart. But that was the first week of October last year... Time has flown by since then!

Please continue to pray for Caden and our whole family as we prepare for this major surgery. It will affect all of us and I worry about how it will impact both Caden and Kyler.