I'll be Dr. Adryanna too, but I want to keep the Y.

The weather here is so much nicer this week.  It's still nice and hot but the humidity is mostly gone.  I was up this morning at 5:30 am and went for a short run.  It was so nice out that I felt like I could run forever!  Unfortunatley I have other commitments and couldn't.  Today was a big day for us.

Today was Adryanna's 6 month check up with the cardiologist.  She get's very excited about these appointments because they always mean fun and exciting things.  She has a routine that we follow when we go and it makes it a fun trip for her.  The hospital has great things to entertain kids of all ages.  We have been doing this every six months or so since she was two and she's now almost five.  She's probably had about 10 echocardiograms and ecg's as well as one MRI.  She has what they call an AV Tunnel and it was difficult to diagnose because it is not where you would normally find this kind of defect.  Usually this defect would come right off the Aorta and go back into the ventricle.  Adryanna's branches off right at the spot where the coronary artery meets the aorta which made it hard to get a proper diagnosis.

So I took the afternoon off and we spent the afternoon in Hamilton at McMaster Children's Hospital.  She does so well at these appointments.  The echo requires her to stay very still for about 45 minutes then they have to review it, do an ecg and then the cardiologist checks her.  Since Adryanna's heart defect is a fairly rare one and is oddly placed they like to thouroughly check her out and often have medical students come in and see her too.  This can mean up to 4 hours at the hospital.  Today it was about three and she was so happy and fun through the whole thing.  She was completely silent through the echo except when she mumbled the name of a dinosaur in the movie.  She coloured and chattered away while we waited for the cardiologist to come in and she was super cute when today's Resident Doctor's name was Adriana.  She proudly told her that her name is different because it's with a Y not an I.  I think this might have been her favorite part of the whole visit today.  She was instantly buddies with this doctor who she had never met. She had to tell everyone else that she was going to be Dr. Adryanna too but with a y not an i.


I'm so proud of her everytime we have these appointments because she takes everything in stride.  When she had to be sedated for an echo she didn't even flinch when they put the IV in and when they put her under general anesthetic for her MRI she went off to sleep without even a twitch.  This, the doctor told us, was great because it means she wasn't scared and was very relaxed.

Here she is right before her MRI last June.

The verdict of today's visit was that while her left ventricle is showing slight enlargement she will still get to live her life without restrictions and continue on her schedule of check ups and echo's every 6 months until she's at least 6 years old.  Then when they feel she is big enough she'll go back to Sick Kids in Toronto and have the tunnel repaired.  Of course if she starts to show any symptoms of trouble she will be seen sooner and they will assess the benefits of repairing earlier.  They expect to do this repair through a catheter procedure.  Once that's done she'll be back to normal in no time.