words from Meridith Cornish

Monday, August 4
The details

We got to talk with Dr. Q and the biggest and best thing that he said is that it is completely unexplainable that her lung pressures are as low as they are! We know it was wholly the power of prayers for Emma. A typical pressure ratio of body to lungs is that the lungs are 1/4 of the body. Emma's are still high- on the moderate side, but he was expecting it to be twice what it is. Her lungs are about 1/2 of the body pressures, so we still have a ways to go, but YAY! It's unexplainable :) I replied to him with no... it's prayer :) He agrees!! :D

Ok, details, (we still haven't seen her) they did a FULL REPAIR! We weren't sure whether they'd need to leave a hole open in order to help with the PH, but he didn't need to because the PH was so much better than he thought.

He addressed what Dr.S had said to him in April after the cath when she said that Emma was inoperable. He said that she had an opinion that the PH was severe and irreversible. He said that he knew that her life wouldn't be more than a few more months without it and agrees with Dr. Nadkarni that if she's not going to live without the repair that it's definitely a reason to try it, and boy was he glad that he did! Her heart is fully repaired, her PH is better than he could have imagined, and GOD has proven himself through this all!

The other little details... There's some leakage in valves... I want to say he said the left valve- too much info all at the same time- and that as long as it stays like it is it's good to go. It's possible that she'll need more work later on for the valves, but it's hard to guess at this point.

She came off the nitrates, which are dilators to my understanding, so that's another positive thing. Also, he said that she does have moderate PVOD (see prior post but I don't have time to link it right now) but it seems that the arteries in the lungs are relaxing how they should- which means that it wasn't irreversible damage to the lungs-- at least not completely.

He mentioned going home on medications for the PH but I was just glad he was talking about going home. We'll figure that all out over the next few weeks.

Dr. Q said this is only the second repair like this that he's done in the past 20 years and was so glad everything turned out like it did!

More later, hopefully we'll get to see her pretty soon!