It's been a very long day. It's tough to get all our stuff together and get out the door as is, but when it's an early morning appointment - it makes for a very long day. We sat in some stupid rush hour traffic, that turned out to be nothing more than a stall or accident blocking a part of the road - backing us up for a full 20 minutes. ANNOYING. We arrived at Doernbecher's with time to grab a Starbuck's at probably the most profitable Starbuck's ever -- and surprisingly, there wasn't much of a line. Andi was praised a few times for being so cute, but when a lady commented to others 'isn't she beautiful?' I had to chime in with a hair toss and grab that attention, 'why yes, I am beautiful, aren't I?' After starting to say it, I wish I didn't -- the editor feature apparently doesn't work that early in the morning. Oops. I couldn't even look them in the eye when I joked and laughed at my dumbassness. Yes, that's a word. Embarrassed, we shuffled away - only to have two members of the audience follow us onto the elevator. I think I did one of those shuffle your feet dances and whistled a happy tune, while I stared at my watch a few times... It's essentially the equivalent of rotating blond hair around the finger. Der-de-der-der-der! Doh. I quickly got off that elevator and found peace in a new audience. Anonymous. Yes, that's better.
We went for the sedated echo. They basically gave her a bit of Valium through the g-tube, well, I did... and flushed it in. Ten minutes later, Miss Stone was in the house. Mellow and stoney-eyed...she was relaxed. She did great, and endured the echo like a pro. It's essentially an ultrasound of your heart. After the echo, we got dressed and went back to Starbuck's for a refill of the ol' coffee. I pushed some blenderized diet through the g-tube and then we went and waited to meet with our cardiologist. First, we prefunked with the cardiology resident, that did the catch-up on all things Bean from the past year. That was fun. I heard myself say, 'sorry for the unload, but...' She quickly added, 'no, that's fine - you guys have been busy.' I think I threw in something about her only getting the highlights too. After awhile longer, our cardiologist came in. This cardiologist is the one who did a fetal echo twice on us. Once at 20 weeks, when we were checking everything to gather data on Andi, as the ultrasound showed some abnormalities. He said if we kept the baby, which we did based on the variety of tests and conclusions that were drawn by the Dr's and genetic counselor - that we were to come back at 26 weeks, so he could see her when she was a bit bigger. We did and he at that point said he though he saw a pin-sized hole in her heart, but 80% of those close up by the time the kid was born. Then we saw him since she was born. He was the one that explained that not only did she have one hole, she had two ("Bonus!") and a valve issue - she had one large valve that needed to be turned into two. We worked with him on medicine balances (sildenifil (viagra) and Lasix)... which was quite the undertaking as it was a tough balance. Too wet (lungs) and she'd have trouble breathing, too dry (lungs) and she was dehydrated. Although it seems like a long time ago, and some distant nightmare - it really wasn't that long ago. In any case, he's know her since before she was born - so he was pleased to see her progress. Her heart is good. She still has some leaky valve issues - but there's no pulmonary hypertension or anything like that. We updated the dose of Enalipril (lowers blood pressure to help ensure the blood in the heart can travel upward like it is supposed to), to adjust to her current weight. We're to see him again in a year.
So, it's not as glorious as I was hoping for - I was hoping to get off the medicine altogether. But it's better than any bad news we could have heard. So, we went to refill our prescription and have been trying to catch up on things, after fleeing the hospital with glee. Andi slept as soon as we left, and stayed asleep the entire trip to the Kaiser Pharmacy. It's been a long day.
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