Heart Defect

I mentioned in the first post that we found out about Kaelyn's heart defect. So, here is some more info. We have known for a while that she has what is called an AV Canal defect. It is a pretty serious complication that will require open-heart surgery when she is big enough to handle it. Click on the link if you want more info.

In addition to that, we had a few echocardiograms done on Kaelyn while she was still in the womb. The cardiologists told us that they thought Kaelyn's pulmonary artery was about 1/4 the size it needed to be. This causes a problem because not enough blood can get to the lungs to pick up oxygen and then sent out to the body. The issue with this surgery is that it needs to be done as soon as possible. Usually within a week after birth. It isn't open-heart surgery but it is still a bit complicated. The biggest concern with this particular surgery is that Kaelyn needs to double in size before it is even a possibility. On the brightside, though, another echocardiogram was done on her after she was born and they saw that the artery isn't as small as they had thought. So, they put her on some medicine to help keep her ductus open (trying to buy some time and still make sure that she gets proper blood flow). A couple of days ago, they took her off the medicine and are waiting for the ductus to close in order to see what will happen with her artery. If it does ok, we will just have to wait for her to put on a lot of weight for her open-heart surgery. If it doesn't they'll put her back on the medicine and then we'll have to wait for her to put on enough weight for the less complicated surgery, and then more weight for the open-heart surgery. So, basically it is just a waiting game.

Now, in addition to the first two things, we just found out on Saturday that she has another heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot. This one is a bit more complicated to understand, but the hope is that it will work to offset the AV canal defect.

So that's where we stand right now. Kaelyn is looking pretty good and putting on some weight so we are happy about that. We just keep hoping and praying that she and her little body will be able to make it through all of the challenges that she faces.