Follow up

We went back for another follow-up appointment today, this time with Abbi's cardiologist, Dr. Kantoch. It was a long one at 3.5 hours. Basically as soon as we walked in they weighed and measured Abbi (She is 33lbs and 93cm tall). Then we went straight in for an EKG and a blood "plessure". It was looking good. We were making progress. Then we were sent back to the waiting room. Where we waited. And waited. And waited some more. Heck, a lot of waiting took place.

When we finally got in for our echo we still had about an hour and a half ahead of us. The echo went well. Abbi got to pick out her movie (Dora, of course), and that kept her quite happy throughout. Then we went into a room and Brandi (our old home care nurse) did a SAT on Abbi (88-89%). Then we spoke with Dr. Kantoch, very briefly. He had to perform some specialized procedure on a baby, which was very last minute, so that totally messed up the appointment schedule, and made him fairly distracted, in my opinion.

So what I did get from our "distracted" conversation was that we can take Abbi off of the Lasix (the diruectic), and the Enalapril (blood pressure). Woo hoo! Now I realize that a child with a pretty serious heart defect taking only 4 medications is fairly minimal, but in our lives, its a lot. She has never had to take more than one. So believe me, we are glad to see 2 of the 4 go! Its been a battle twice a day every day since the surgery.

He said we should return in the fall for another echo to see how the fenestration is doing. He says they were not able to locate it during this echo (I remember at the discharge echo it was hard for them to see then), but he knows its still there because her SATs have not changed. So he said at that time, they will determine whether or not it needs to be closed and if she can come off of the Warafin (blood thinner).

So that was our exciting (if you can call it that) day. Now no more appointments for quite a few months. I'm quite glad about that. We have had at least one thing per week since the surgery, so a medical break is much appreciated!