So thankful!

Well we survived Sadie's appointment with the cardiologist today...

The diagnosis is that she has a Ventricular Septal Defect or VSD as the doctor called it. He told us she had a "smallish" one though. Let me put that into terms we can all understand... basically a VSD is this... the lower chambers of the heart work such that the left one pumps the "blue" blood into the lungs which returns it to the right chamber as "red" blood which then pumps it to the rest of the organs of the body... there is a wall between these 2 chambers that keeps the blood from mixing. Well Sadie's wall in her heart has a small hole in it which causes some of the red blood to pump into the left chamber and go back through the lungs... this means that her heart is working inefficiently because some of the blood goes through the system a second time.

The doctor was very relieved that the hole was small... he said that these dont get any bigger over time and that they can correct themselves... or in the very least that it will get proportionally smaller as Sadie and her heart grow larger. So that is very good news.

He also let us know that we will probably not see anything physically in Sadie that would make us think she had anything going on. He said he was 90-95% sure that there would never be surgery necessary for the hole, BUT if it was required then this is the type of surgery that can actually correct the problem and is very effective.

Sadie was amazing at the doctors office... we started out by going in and stripping her down to a diaper and they weighed and measured her. Then they did a ekg where they stick all sorts of sticker thingys on her and hook wires up to them and monitor her heart. She was very interested in what the nurse was doing and just watched her. Then they took her blood pressure on her arm and leg... she didnt cry at all. The cardiologist came in after that and talked with us and said he wanted to do a heart echo (an ultrasound of her heart) so we went into another room and had that done. Sadie again was wonderful... she had to lay for quite awhile as they took pictures of her heart from straight on, down by her abdomen, and then from up by her neck. She did fuss a bit because she had to lay for so long and Elliot and I had to hold her arms and legs for a little while - but really I was SO impressed and I am SO proud of her!!!

After the heart echo the doctor reviewed all the pictures they took and came in and told us the diagnosis... He seemed VERY relieved to have good news for us - I think he thought it was much worse when he first ordered the echo...

It seems as though these VSD's are pretty common because when he came into the room to talk with us he had a pad of paper that had pictures of 2 hearts on it... a "normal" heart and a heart with VSD... so we have the visual to look at and understand whats going on with Sadie's heart as well as some of his notes he put on there...

We have to go back for a follow up appointment in 3 months, but we are SO relieved to have the diagnosis we do... sounds like our little Sadie will be living a normal life and her heart (while not quite normal) will remain pretty healthy :)