Cardiology Update & Milestone

Charlotte saw her cardiologist, Dr. Young, on Friday. As trips to the Cardiology clinic go, it was a good one. We arrive a few minutes late, but didn't have to wait at all for Charlotte's echocardiogram. The bummer was that Charlotte actually started eating her bottle just before they called us. Go figure.

Anyway, the echo took about 45 minutes. We kept Charlotte in her infant carrier and I tried to get her to continue with the bottle. Instead, she fixated on either 1) the echo screen and technician, causing her to writhe to her left or 2) Dora the Explorer (we learned about "sube" and "baje" the mountain with Linda the Llama. I like Dora!). When not fixing her gaze, the little munchkin squirmed.

Back in the exam room, we waited around a bit. Then Charlotte had a 10-point EKG. The technician kept losing waves. He'd say "I've lost a..." and I'd look at Charlotte to see her holding the lead in her hand and waving it around. Yep. She was disconnecting the test!

Toni, the APN, and Jackie, the clinic nurse, came in and did the regular things--checked Charlotte's pulse-ox, took her temp, weighed and measured her.

Then we waited. And waited. It didn't occur to me until later that the last time I waited forever for a doctor to read an ultrasound was the day we found out about Charlotte's heart. Good thing--I would've panicked.

So...here's what we learned:
-- Charlotte is 29" long!! She has officially graduated from her infant carrier and we've installed her big girl carseat. That's pretty cool. (This is the milestone.)
-- Charlotte weighs 7.135kilo. I have no idea how many pounds that is :)
--**The doctors (Young and Pophal, the interventionist cardiologist) could not get a complete read on the echo. Little Charlotte moved around so much that they were not able to get a reading on the pressures in her right pulmonary artery (the one that required angioplasty in September)

What next? Well...in order to get a reading, we'll need to have an echocardiogram performed under anesthesia. While we're at the hospital we'll also do a lung profusion scan (see 9/28/05 entry, this is the VQ scan. I promise to take pictures this time.)

What does it mean? Right now, we're asuming that we simply couldn't get a picture because she was moving so much. In effect, the echo picked up no flow image in the RPA. Given that Charlotte is a lovely shade of pink (Dr. Pophal said so when he saw us in the parking lot!) and that she is generally happy and healthy in appearance, there is no reason to believe that we've got any kind of major arterial blockage. So, based on what our bare eyes can see, we're assuming the echo will be fine.

Other measures were pretty normal, at least for Charlotte.

When? We'll be at Children's Memorial all day on Friday 2/3 for the two tests. Charlotte should not need to be admitted and we'll be home that afternoon.

Sorry for the late post--We left just after the appointment last Friday to go on retreat with our synagogue. Adult Retreat+ Charlotte. It was a lot of fun. No connectivity up there or I would have blogged.