Echo Again

Olivia's Cardiologist visit of Tuesday went well. Dr. Dommer is happy with Olivia's heart function at this time. The echo shows that she does have some thinckening and enlargement of the right side of her heart, which is to be expected with her defects. The trick will be limiting this enlargement and thickening to retain adequate cardiac function. Olivia was pretty good for the ultrasound, but by minute 15 or 20 minute she was pretty much fed up with it and became quite inconsolable. This limited Dr. Dommer's ability to get a good look at the surgery site (it's on the back  right side of the heart) and is difficult to visualize with ultrasound even with a cooperative patient. On our next visit (3 weeks) Olivia might get a little sedation so they can evaluate the state of her conduit.  

The plan at this point is to let Olivia grow to the point where she basically 'outgrows' the current conduit --  meaning she will start having 'Blue Episodes'  (Lower Oxygen Saturations 70% or so).Dr. Dommer expects this to happen somewhere between 4 and 6 months old. She is now anywhere in the range from 80-90%, depending on how stressed she is. Once her Oxygen consistently stays in the 70% range, she will be evaluated by the UofM cardiac team via a 

cardiac catheterization.

If Olivia's Pulmonary vessels have grown the way we would like them to, hopefully the Cardiac Team can then attempt a full or partial repair on the internal heart defects. If the Pulmonary 

Vessels are not as large as we'd like, she will just receive a larger conduit and we wait for the vessels to grow more....  Obviously we would prefer scenario 1. 

Weight wise our little peanut is starting to outgrow the 'little' moniker, she is now officially over 

8lbs.  :)