Our girl's heart

We have been asked a lot of questions so I thought I would explain (copy and paste from a medical site) our baby girl's heart condition. We are not exactly sure what she has. The sonogram of her heart does not make complete sense, but we believe that she has a condition called Tetralogy of Fallot. We do not have a concrete diagnosis because the test used and results are poorly written. Our social worker explained that where she is located in China, the medical technology is poor, and they will not spend the money on a "orphan" to get further testing completed in a major city, such as Beijing. We will complete further tests at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh as soon as we get her home. So here is her condition...

Tetralogy of Fallot involves four heart defects:
A large ventricular septal defect (VSD)
Pulmonary (PULL-mon-ary) stenosis
Right ventricular hypertrophy (hi-PER-tro-fe)
An overriding aorta


Ventricular Septal Defect
The heart has a wall that separates the two chambers on its left side from the two chambers on its right side. This wall is called a septum. The septum prevents blood from mixing between the two sides of the heart. A VSD is a hole in the part of the septum that separates the ventricles, the lower chambers of the heart. The hole allows oxygen-rich blood from the left ventricle to mix with oxygen-poor blood from the right ventricle.

Pulmonary Stenosis
This defect is a narrowing of the pulmonary valve and the passage through which blood flows from the right ventricle to the pulmonary artery.
Normally, oxygen-poor blood from the right ventricle flows through the pulmonary valve, into the pulmonary artery, and out to the lungs to pick up oxygen. In pulmonary stenosis, the heart has to work harder than normal to pump blood, and not enough blood reaches the lungs.


Right Ventricular Hypertrophy
This defect occurs if the right ventricle thickens because the heart has to pump harder than it should to move blood through the narrowed pulmonary valve.

Overriding Aorta
This is a defect in the aorta, the main artery that carries oxygen-rich blood to the body. In a healthy heart, the aorta is attached to the left ventricle. This allows only oxygen-rich blood to flow to the body.
In tetralogy of Fallot, the aorta is between the left and right ventricles, directly over the VSD. As a result, oxygen-poor blood from the right ventricle flows directly into the aorta instead of into the pulmonary artery to the lungs.

Outlook
Together, these four defects mean that not enough blood is able to reach the lungs to get oxygen, and oxygen-poor blood flows out to the body. This needs open heart surgery to be repaired.

This is scary stuff for us, but with repair the outlook is good. She will never be a track star, but that's OK with us. We have been asked several times why we are adopting a little girl with a bum heart. (that's how I like to describe it) The answer is simple, we felt a connection with her, and she will die in China as a young adult if this is not repaired. As many of you know, Matt was adopted when he was 3 1/2 and he did not have a medical condition that threatened his life, but the environmental situations that he was involved in through the foster care system, he would have chosen a different, most likely more delinquent, path in life. Matt felt VERY strongly that we bring her into our family. I guess you can say he is "paying it forward" So no, she is not perfect, but who is? We feel that a lovely little girl who will enrich our lives as much as we will enrich hers, and we can't wait to bring her home!