HOME FROM THE CATH LAB

The cath went GREAT! Dr. Teitel said that he found very little leakage from Grace's tricuspid valve and that (knock on wood) that she may not need any further surgeries for it. He also said that her pulmonary hypertension is GONE. I didn't know that you could outgrow PH! He did say that she might be at high risk for developing it again when she is older. We'll cross that bridge when we get there. She will need to have an open chest surgery in a year or so to replace her pacemaker leads. She is doing fine with the one remaining lead but it will be better for her to have two.

He said that she should be fine to travel on the plane and even to go to the mountains :) I hope her primary cardiologist Dr Cooper agrees. We were told that we would have to stay in the hospital until until 9:00pm because, while in the cath lab, they went into her pulmonary artery to do the balloon procedure, which requires 8 hours of observation. At 9:15 pm I was getting anxious and was annoyed that the doc didn't write up the discharge papers on time. Since there was no sign of the doc I decided to open up my laptop and check on Baby Moriah (a sweet baby girl who also has a heart defect among other things) Baby Moriah has been in the hospital for almost 1 year straight! Right then I felt so ashamed of myself. Here I was feeling annoyed that Gracie was in the hospital 15 minutes longer than we were told when our dear friends have spent the better part of the last 12 months in a hospital. So I took a deep breath, sipped tea, sat back and relaxed knowing that at some point I would be sleeping in my own bed that night. Everyone please say a prayer for our friends the Nelsons.

Once we were home we were a little worried that Gracie would be awake all night because she slept so much in the hospital but we were lucky. She went right to sleep and even slept in past 8:00 the next morning.