Just The Three of Us

For Valentine's day this year we had to spend the week in Portland to get our little one checked out. At Sydney's 6 month well check the nurse practitioner and doctor noticed a loud heart murmur. So loud that they sent us the next day to River Bend to get an Eco. Syd did wonderful during the test. We thought that everything would be fine but in less than an hour the doctor called us and told us that Syd would have to go to OHSU to have heart surgery. HEART SURGERY? I know, super scary. So we packed up and within two weeks we made our way up to OHSU. We had the chance to meet with Syd's surgeon who told us more information about what he was going to do. Dr.Birch explained to us that some of Syd's blood that has already been used is being pumped back into her heart to be re-pumped (which is not good). In her x-rays of before and after, you can see where the leak is and how it was fixed. If this was not fixed it could make her heart become enlarged because it is working harder. To do the surgery they were going to go through her main artery in her leg and fiber optically travel up to her heart to place a coil. The coil that would be inserted has fibers connected to it to help close off the hole and eventually tissue will grab onto them to close it completely.

We wondered what would happen after the surgery. They had told us that she would be able to go home that day because her surgery was so early in the morning, but when she came out of the procedure she had a major coughing attack from being sedated for so long. From the coughing attack her incision opened up (it just had a band-aid on it, no stitches) causing her main femoral artery to start bleeding. A little scary, but it worked out ok. Come to find out that when she was in surgery they had to hold compression on the same area for 50 min. CRAZY! After we got everything under control we found out we had to stay so they could watch her over night. This turned out to be the worst part of the whole experience. She did fine, but Syd is so wiggly and active that being hooked to things just to make sure she is breathing sucked. I'll let you know if she stops breathing : )

Anyway, by noon the next day we were literally waiting in a line at the door for the nurse to tell us we could go home. I think they were keeping us until 12 so they could charge us for another day : ( Oh well. After we left Syd did fine and didn't have any complications. We had a couple of things that we wondered would change after the surgery, and they did. One of them was Syd's cough. Sydney has had a cough since she was about a month old that she always struggled with. It wakes her up at night and bothers her during the day. I had taken her into the doctor multiple times for them to check on it, with no solution. WE FOUND IT-HAVE HEART SURGERY! The doctor said that some of the blood and fluid that was re-circulating into her heart could be going into her lungs, causing the cough. I guess he was right (that's why he gets paid the big bucks). Syd has not had her cough at all since about 2 weeks after her surgery. The other thing we were wondering about was why Syd was so skinny. The doctors said she was fine in %, but she didn't have a roll on her body. Now, she is starting to pack on the rolls. When we asked the doctor about it, he said that it is probably because her little body is working extra hard to pump blood, which burns more calories. This makes perfect sense now, that's why she was eating so much.

Anyway, Sydney is doing great and growing like a weed. Here are some pictures from our adventure.

Getting ready to see the doctor, while playing on the turtle.

Check out my cool PJ's

NOT HAPPY.

If you look close, inside the biohazard bag at the tip of the pen is the coil that they put into Syd's heart.

This is hard to figure out, but the bottom right x-ray shows the fluid going back into the wrong side of the heart (the dark part that looks like a liver) and the picture on top is the x-ray after the coil was put in. You can see the huge difference.