Adryanna's Heart Repair

On Tuesday August 6th Adryanna had her heart defect repaired:) I wanted to share her story but it took me until today to get it all written out:) On Monday we headed to Toronto to stay at Ronald McDonald House.  The one in Toronto is the largest one in Canada (perhaps the world).  It has 81 rooms and is the most welcoming and wonderful place I could imagine for people who are dealing with very stressful situations to stay.  We arrived and were greeted by a volunteer and shown around.  We completed some paperwork and were left to explore. We checked out our room and could see the CN Tower out our window!

On the way to Toronto!

Each room has a chalkboard beside the door that you can draw on!

 The first order of business was to get some dinner.  We were very close to Queen's Park so we walked past there and found a little restaurant across the street from the Royal Ontario Museum.  We then took the subway back.  Adryanna loves taking the subway so it was a must.  Once we were back she played Playstation with Adrian and found a Harry Potter game to play.  Then it was bedtime because we had a very early morning.

The CN Tower

Riding the Subway

Being silly at dinner

Playing video games

On Tuesday at 6:30am we arrived at the Hospital for Sick Children.  It is a wonderful hospital that people from around the world come to for treatment.  She was being cared for by the best of the best.  We had nothing but amazing care from the minute we arrived.  At 8am we went to the Cardiac Catheter lab for her procedure and were told that she was the doctors only case of the day and that it could be 2-6hrs before they were done depending on what they saw when they got in there.  Turns out they saw more than they expected but were done in less than 3hrs.  Her heart defect was much more involved than they expected and was quite large.  They were able to close off one end of it.  What they believe is that her defect (Aortico-Left Ventricle Tunnel) actually started out as her right coronary artery because she does not have one now.  They also found that her left coronary artery had grown all the way around to almost connect to her tunnel.  The end of it is completely blocked.  They have no concerns with that as many people have only one coronary artery and they are perfectly fine.  The concern they still have is that one end of the tunnel is still open and there is a little bit of flow still going into it when the heart pumps.  This is something they will still have to watch closely and may require repair later.  They thought about closing it off at the same time as the other end but this end is quite wide and the device they used may not be big enough.  They may have to do open heart to fix it when the time comes.  That's down the road though and not something to worry about now.

After the procedure Adryanna was quite sick.  She did not tolerate the anaesthetic well and spent most of the rest of the day throwing up and sleeping.  She doesn't remember much about Tuesday.  She took extra long to come out of the anaesthetic because they had to give her a little extra right at the end.  She was having some trouble breathing and they needed to help her out a little bit.  In the end she was okay though and after a few doses of anti nausea medications she started to turn around and by Wednesday morning she was ready to go home.  

Not feeling so well:(

Wednesday morning being silly:)

Before we could leave she had to have a chest xray and an echo done.  The echo was a bit of a surprise but that was because the doctor could hear a murmur again and wanted to make sure everything was the way it should be once that was done he was happy and sent us on our way.

We're free!!!

So now we are home and she is doing wonderful.  It was an up and down week but today is day 5 post repair and she is right back to herself.  She is eating and drinking and playing.  Tomorrow she can go back to soccer practise and get back to all her usual activities.  She is looking forward playing soccer this week and I'm happy to see her feeling better.  She will have three check ups in the next 6 months including echoes and chest xrays.  Two with her regular cardiologist at McMaster and then at the 6 month mark the third will be with the cardiologist that did her repair.  They work in collaboration so they will share everything they find.  It's going to be a busy time for her but one that is such an important part of who she is and who she will become.  She is a lucky little girl with a very special heart:)