Cardiology Appointment

Silje had an appointment yesterday with her cardiologist. We drove down to Indy to meet with her. Incidentally, she does come up to Lafayette occassionally, so we will be able to have other appointments up here, but she wanted us to come to her office for the first appointment following her discharge from the hospital.

First they measured her weight and length. She was 10 lbs 5 oz. So she has gained nicely from last week. And she was 23" long. She was only 21.5" or so last week, but was 21" at birth. I had figured after her measurement last week that her birth measurement had been inaccurate, as that put her in the 90-95th percentile for length. But now I'm thinking last week was inaccurate and her birth measurement and yesterday's were the right ones, and she's just a tall/long baby.

Next they did an EKG. They didn't say much about that, but for some reason Silje really didn't like it. I have no idea why, it's pretty unobtrusive. But she really cried about it, which is odd for her. I don't think Kris and I have ever really heard her cry like that before.

After she calmed down, and fell asleep actually, they took her blood pressure. They took it in both her arm and her leg. There was about a 20 point difference, with her arm reading higher than her leg. This indicates that there is likely some stenosis in the aortic arch, where they had done the repair, as that area supplies blood to the lower part of the body. Dr. A said this wasn't anything to worry about yet, but they would keep an eye on it. If they need to they can put a balloon up into that area and expand it to get it to stretch. This would require an overnight in the hospital, but is not a particularly dangerous procedure.

Next was the echocardiogram. Silje didn't mind this at all, even though it lasted quite awhile. In fact she slept through the first half of it or so. The echo tech looked for a long time, and then Dr. A came in and also took some images. They were looking at the whole heart, but in particular they were looking at the aortic arch and the aortic valve. They both look good. The valve is a little underdeveloped because it was not used much as the arch was interrupted, but Dr. A said it actually looks pretty good. That could be a potential problem in the future, but Dr. A isn't too worried about it. The other thing she mentioned, which she said they had noticed before, but I don't remember them ever saying anything to us about it ealier is that she has higher pressure than normal in her pulminary arteries. I guess this isn't all that uncommon because in younger people they make more of a right angle, and as you get older the go up more and the pressure lessens. But hers is more pressure than normal. So something else that we don't need to be terribly worried about, but they will keep an eye on.

Overall Dr. A thought she was looking really good and was very happy with how she is doing.

Here is the image of the heart that Dr. A gave to us to show us what she was talking about.



After our appointment we stopped by the PICU to say hello. They had told us when we left to come by sometime after she was discharged because they love to see their kids later when they are healthy. So we stopped by and saw a few of the people we had worked with during our time there, including the nurse we got to know the best, Tiffany. She was happy to see Silje again, and see her doing so well. I'm sure it does feel good to them to see these kids later and see that their hard work paid off.

Oh, and yesterday was our 10th wedding anniversary! Going to the cardiologist wasn't the most fun way to celebrate, but getting a pretty good bill of health for our little girl was a good present.