Cardiologist Update

Over the past few weeks, we have noticed Grace's oxygen saturation's begin to trend downward rather than upward. We have also noticed that she has begun to have heavier breathing. After the Fontan surgery that she had in December, her oxygen saturations should be at the least, high 80's and mostly in the 90's. When we returned home in December, hers were in the mid 80's. However, they are now in the mid to high 70's consistently. They should be improving rather than decreasing. We had a cardiologist appointment this morning and an echo cardiogram, EKG, and x-ray were done. Those results will be sent to Atlanta and Grace's heart surgeon and a team of doctors there will be looking at the tests/her charts on Monday and deciding a plan of action. Her cardiologist feels like she has either grown some more collateral vessels (vessels that the body grows to try and "fix" the heart and itself) which steal her blood flow from reaching her lungs to get oxygenated, or that perhaps some of these vessels she already had, have gotten worse. There are several possible reasons as to why her saturations are lowering, but all of them will more than likely require a heart catheterization to be done in order to find the problem/s and/or to fix them. We hate so much the thought of her having to go through any more procedures, but know that some answers need to be found and that it is all what is best for her in the long run. We will update next week once we here more about the game plan.

Just so this post isn't all a downer, thought I would post a picture of Grace this afternoon after painting. She started out with a paint brush and this is how she ended,obviously using her hands was much more fun :)