Christopher's MRI was today. Everything went really well. We were a bit early and the MRI was running a bit behind, so he ended up not going for the scan until after 11 - at which point he had been fasting for five hours. Poor baby! However, we have jumped to the front of the line before when serious stuff was happening, so we have no problem with waiting when someone else needs the scanner more than Christopher does. And fortunately we had brought our baby carrier with us, so he actually slept the whole time while we waited.
One extra nice thing today was that one of Christopher's nurses from the PICU, Margot, was working in the MRI area and took care of him today. She is really sweet and was with us in the aftermath of the stroke, so we are very fond of her. It was great to see a familiar face and Margot was thrilled to see how good Christopher is looking. He weighed 5.79 kg today - that is 12 lbs, 12 oz! What a big boy!
The scan went well and there no problems with the anesthetic. Christopher was super fussy when he first woke up - very hungry but so frantic that he couldn't stay latched to feed. However, once Brad held him and patted his back for a few minutes, Christopher let out about four huge burps and then settled right down and had a big feed. We got home around mid-afternoon.
Christopher's regular cardiologist is away on vacation but one of the other cardiologists took the time to come see us after the MRI to let us know what they found. To recap, here's what Christopher's aorta looks like (when drawn by a chicken, or, say, his mom):
The blood comes out of the heart on the left, flows up and around the aortic arch, and mostly down the descending aorta on the right to the body. There are some arteries that branch off at the top of the arch to feed the brain and upper body. His first surgery was over on the right side of the diagram, where they basically took out the narrowed piece and sewed the ends together. The second surgery involved slicing lengthwise along the underside of the arch and putting in a Gore-Tex patch.
The MRI today confirmed that the patch is just a bit big for the length of aorta that it's covering and therefore it has sort of puckered into the aorta, just where the ascending aorta curves into the arch. The cardiologist told us today that the size of the passage is about 50% narrowed at that point.
His blood pressure in his right arm was also a touch higher today, probably because the blood is shooting out of that narrowed part right into the artery that you can see there (the brachiocephalic artery), which feeds the right arm. However, his blood pressure in general is still pretty good (90 in the right arm and 70 or 75 everywhere else) so they're not too worried about that.
As you can imagine, everything shown in black on the diagram will grow as Christopher grows. The patch will not, and in fact that's why they put in a slightly larger piece than was needed - so it could expand as he grows. Likely as that happens, the patch will stretch out a little and the pucker will flatten out, opening up the blockage. The question is whether or not it's ok to leave it for now and just wait for him to grow or whether it needs to be fixed sooner.
And the answer? We still don't know. The cardiologists and surgeons will review it and may consult with Sick Kids again. We were told today that we will likely get the final answer from Christopher's regular cardiologist, when he gets back from vacation, which we think is in two weeks.
We were happy to hear that he wasn't going to need immediate surgery, but to be honest, it was tough to find out that we'll have to wait another two weeks for answers. However, for the moment, the little guy is doing wonderfully, so we'll hang in there for now!
Beautiful artistry there Mom! I'm glad to hear little man gets a break for awhile and thimgs sound positive so far! (considering my patients woof & meow)
Big love to you all
Posted by: Farandolae | 08/11/2011 at 01:23 AM
I was just getting ready to send you a message, asking what had happened. I'm glad I read this instead, so you didn't feel you had to repeat yourself. Expect a package soon. It's on it's way!
Posted by: Trina | 08/11/2011 at 05:53 PM