Follow-Ups

Several follow-up appointments later and I'm finally getting around to summing it all up and writing again. My apologies.

Joey is doing really well these days, growing SO fast like the little Champ he is! Last week's weigh-in has him at 9lbs, 6 ozs! Go Joey, Go Joey....

At every follow-up he has an echocardiogram to examine each of his heart defects and monitor progress of his heart function. Measuring the pressure across his aortic valve will determine when he needs another cardiac catheterization with balloon valvoplasty. Measuring the pressure across the Pulmonary Artery Band helps determine when he will need the VSD (ventricular septal defect, or "hole") repaired. The last appointment showed that his aortic stenosis (measured by the pressure across his aortic valve) has stayed stable! The pressure has increased since his first balloon, but has not changed in 2 weeks. This is very good news, indeed. We are not going to schedule that intervention until the pressure is much higher, and the more time in between balloons the better.

What did change was the pressure across the PA (pulmonary artery) band. This is actually a pretty good sign, as it means he is growing well both in over-all size AND in heart function. His heart is growing to a normal size with greatly increased function. Therefore the likely next step will be to schedule the surgery to close the VSD and remove that PA band.

We are a little surprised by this, as the original time frame had Joseph waiting several more months before underg0ing this next surgery. However, he is healthy enough to take on this next challenge, so let's do it! I will post more about the details of the surgery when we have it scheduled, which we expect to do at this next cardio follow-up.