Cardiac Cath

Silje's cardiac cath went fine. It was not as successful as they had hoped, but they did open up the aorta some. Hopefully it will prove to be enough. They will keep an eye on it. It could get larger on its own, stay the same size, or get smaller again. There is just no way of knowing right now. They can do a cardiac cath again or they could do surgery. Let's hope she doesn't have to have either done.

The procedure was in the morning. Silje and I went down to Indy and Kris took Stian to school, then he came down to meet us. I was really worried about her having to fast, but she did fine with it, even though the procedure started about two hours later than scheduled. It was hard to hand her over to the nurse when it was time for her to go. The procedure took about two hours. Kris and I waited in a waiting room. When it was done the doctor took us back to see video of the procedure. I believe it was an x-ray image, though I'm not sure. We could see the catheter up in her heart and the balloon expanding. I have seen an awful lot of my daughter's insides.

When she started to wake up they took us to her. She was pretty upset and very drugged up. They let me crawl up onto the bed with her and hold her. We had to be very careful to hold her leg still for about 5 hours. So I held her and nursed her and Kris held her leg still. She was pretty upset. When it was time to go up to her room I was able to ride up on the bed with her holding her. They got me situated in the room on the sofa so I could hold her for the 5 hours she needed to be held still. Kris had to leave at this point to go get Stian at daycare. So it was just Silje and me for the rest of the afternoon and into the next morning. This was my view for the first couple of hours.



When she woke up she was much happier, and not so drugged up. After the 5 hours had passed she could move around more. So I continued to hold her, but I didn't have to hold her leg still. Then she looked like this. (her arm is out of the sleeve because she had an IV in her left hand)



We stayed in the hospital overnight. She slept fine. I slept intermittently, but better than I thought I would on a hospital sofa. They let us go the next morning and we came home.

The day was pretty uneventful. We hung out and I packed as we were planning to head to Minnesota and Wisconsin the next day.

That night at 2:00 am though Silje woke up and seemed to be having a very hard time breathing. She freaked me out. She appeared to be gasping for air. So I woke up Kris and then I took her to the emergency room while Kris stayed home with Stian. We don't really know what the issue was, but it appears that she was just coming down with a cold that day, and probably having been intibated for the procedure irritated her throat exacerbating the problem. They did a breathing treatment on her, gave her some steroids and sent us home. Before we left they discouraged us from heading to Minnesota that day. We got home around 6:00 am and went back to sleep.

We hung out at home for another day. Later that afternoon Stian came down with a very high fever, so it was probably for the best that we hadn't gone north that day. We did go north the following day though, and Stian continued to have a high fever for a few days. We're not really sure what it was. Possibly the same thing Silje had, or possible something else. Once the fever broke he did get a bit of a rash, so it might have been rosiola.