Mia's latest heart news

Ok... this post will lead to some troubling news so I thought I would start with that we have had Mia for 2 months today!!!  Needless to say we are so excited to have her in our lives.  She is a joy and so much fun!  She is picking up english so quickly... it is truly amazing.  She enjoyed her first superbowl party and had a fun time staying up late!  She is very resilient and loving and I must say that if you asked her she would agree that she loves to be a part of our family too! 

And now onto the heart news.  Mia was scheduled for another catherization to get more information in the right lung.  They could not previously get into this lung before because they could not access the artery.  At that time they thought that maybe their were no viable arteries there, but a CT scan showed that she did have arteries and vessels to the right lung.  So they scheduled her for this cath, using the CT scan as a road map, so they could measure the pressures and make sure she does not have pulmonary hypertension.  So the results of yesterdays test was that her left lung is screwed and will always be screwed.  She has pulmonary hypertension throughout the lung, and lungs cannot be repaired.  This news was not completely shocking to us, we kind of already knew that.  The right lung is a little better.  With a decent sized artery on that side with vessels that her body has developed to assist her in getting more oxygen.  So let me post a picture of what pulmonary atresia looks like, and then I can explain further.

 

When you look at the pictures the pulmonary artery on a normal heart is large, but her's is more like a vein.  She also has the 2 holes in her heart.  The hole between the atria's is life sustaining for Mia and without it her blood can't mix in any oxygenated blood.  The hole between the ventricles is not necessary... it's not hurting her or helping her either.  The RV is also a non-working chamber for Mia... it is very thick and under high pressure, because of the tiny pulmonary artery it pumps against itself.  So to recap... she is living on one good lung and 3 chambers.  So the next step is that they will present her case to the surgeons and see what they suggest.  Right now our goal for Mia is to improve her breathing a quality of life.  This will most likely mean shunting vessels from her body from her good lung to her heart, but it depends on what the surgeon says.  We are also putting her on baby aspirin to thin her blood.  When you have poor oxygen levels your body produces more red blood cells to try to get as much oxygen as it can, so Mia's blood is very thick.  Thinning her blood can only help to get more blood flowing more easily through her body.  In the long term, as I said before, she will need a heart/lung transplant.   As she grows, it will become more difficult for her.  We will wait to see what our favorite doctor,  Dr. Allada, says is our next step.  Thanks for everyone's support.