Hi everyone
Today was a rather long day, Andrea was not feeling very well and hardly slept at all. It was very busy with a lot of doctors and specialists coming and going. This is partly because she is being transitioned over to the adult transplant cardiology program. We met an adult surgeon who will be assisting a paeds surgeon with installing the heart mate II, a very nice personable and caring man. He said that they feel that the support medications have done as much as they will, medications will not fix what is wrong. Andrea will be the youngest person to have this device put in here although not the smallest one. There is a girl from Nfld. who had one put in about a month ago who is about 35 lbs lighter than she is and about 3 months older. The surgery could take about 10 hours, putting in the device is fairly easy and takes from 1 to 1.5 hours. Andrea is the first one in Edmonton to have a VAD installed in a transplanted heart, although that should make no difference, other transplant centres have done it. It is surprising how many places have VAD programs going, Wpg has one and the Newfie girl is the first one there. We don't want to minimize the risk, it definitely has risks involved. The paeds heart surgeon had said this morning, "Let's put in the Vad and then wait for the perfect match". If she does well on the Vad she will be delisted for 3 to 6 months while her body recovers, her strength and muscle tone return. If this can happen like we all hope it to, then the transplantation will go much easier, but it could mean 2 to 3 years on the Vad, although that is entirely unknown. We sure appreciate all the emails you are sending. There is a computer just outside her room with internet access so we check several times a day. O yes, the surgery is likely early next week.
Goodnight to you all, Maynard
No comments:
Post a Comment