It was Roman's second day in the NICU, I believe, and I was holding him for the first time when a group of 3 cardiac specialists came in to look at him. Vong had been there the day before when they did an echocardiogram on his heart (they use an ultrasound machine to see his heart) we hadn't really heard anything back from them yet and we weren't expecting them to come see him at this time. Side note: I felt like the whole time we were in the NICU if we didn't ask something specific they wouldn't really tell us, but a lot of times we wouldn't even know what kind of questions to ask so we felt like we were kind of in the dark, especially the first week. So the cardiologists came and and started taking turns listening to his heart and talking amongst each other. Then they said they would be back in a little while to talk to us about the anatomy of Roman's heart. I started getting kind of nervous because obviously something was wrong if they had to come back and talk to us about it. They came back probably 3 hours later. They showed us this diagram of a normal heart vs. Roman's heart 
They told us that Roman was missing the wall that separates his left and right Ventricles, a partial one separating his right and left Atrium, and two valves that separate the ventricle and the atrium on both sides. Aka he is missing some very important components to his heart. They also told us that they were worried because his Aorta seemed to be kind of narrow and they weren't sure that after his PDA closed (babies have an extra valve while they are in the womb to help bypass the blood to the lungs since they don't use their lungs while in the womb)his aorta would be too narrow and his body would not get a sufficient amount of blood. The PDA normally closes a few days after birth so they had to keep a close eye on his blood pressure to make sure when his PDA closed that his body was still getting enough blood. His PDA didn't close until day 5! Those 5 days were so long and stressful. Once it finally closed they did another echo on his heart and found that his Aorta wasn't as narrow as they thought, it was just more flat on top rather than arched. The nurse practitioner told us she didn't want to scare us, but if his aorta had of been too narrow they would have had to do emergency heart surgery right away! Umm how do they even do surgery on such a small heart?! To say we were relieved and overwhelmed with gratitude is an understatement! Such a huge blessing. (They still may have to try and widen it a little bit when he gets his big heart surgery, but for now it will be okay!)
Back to his AV Canal defect... Basically with this defect it allows extra blood to circulate to the lungs and the oxygenized and unoxygenized blood mix together making the heart work extra hard. The doctors told us Roman would need surgery to correct the defect between 4 months to a year. We just went to see his cardiac specialist at Primary Children's and we will most likely be doing surgery sometime in January! I am already freaking out about my tiny babe getting open heart surgery at 4 months old, but I am also glad that we can put this behind us so that Roman can continue to grow healthy and strong. Here are some photos from the first few days! 
We have our pre-op echocardiogram next Wednesday, so more updates coming soon! Sorry I have been so slow at updating :) thanks everyone for your love and support for Roman. It's so humbling to see how many people care about him/us. We love you all!
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