Monday, October 8, 2007

Evie's Heart Defect

A twins pregnancy is automatically considered "high risk," so we went to see the neonatologist in Edwards Hospital. Their office has more advanced ultrasound machines than you would typically find in an OB's office, capable of performing "Level 2" ultrasounds and echocardiograms.

Early on in Sharon's pregnancy, the neonatologist suspected that something was wrong with Evie's heart. A normal heart has four chambers and two valves. Gavin's heart looked totally normal, but pan over to Evie and you can clearly see that something is "not right." Evie appeared to only have one ventricle and one valve separating the upper and lower chambers of that ventricle. We then started seeing a pediatric cardiologist who performed monthly echocardiogram (ultrasounds) to monitor Evie's development.

Although it's difficult to be sure until she's out of the womb, she most likely has a single ventricle congenital heart defect. You can read a little more about this
here and here. There are also some short "flash" movies on those sites that do a nice job of showing a normal heart and a single-ventricle heart.

The good news is that the amazing advances of pediatric surgery will allow this defect to be (somewhat) corrected, and she should go on to lead a healthy normal life (like this
remarkable girl) and only loose about 20-30% of her heart and lung capacity. She may not be running any marathons, but she should able to run and jump on the playground just like any other normal child.

Correcting this defect will require a trio of surgeries within the first 18-24 months of her life, the first of which will be performed shortly after she's born; within 5-7 days of birth, where the doctors will go about re-routing arteries in a series of stages. Unfortunately, this procedure will have to be performed at another hospital (Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn), so Evie could be transported there as quickly as 24 hours after birth, as long as she is stable. So while Gavin and Sharon (recovering from her c-section) are at Edwards, Evie will be over at Christ Hospital. Two newborns in two different hospitals: yikes! I'm not sure how that's going to work out yet, but luckily we have lots of friends and family support around us.

Despite all of this, Sharon's pregnancy has been smooth sailing and Evie and Gavin did great, showing impressive growth for twins. Both babies were always very active and grew stronger every day (just ask Sharon about the kicks!). As I mentioned in an earlier post, the best possible scenario was for Sharon to carry them as long as possible so that Evie's lungs could fully develop, and that's exactly what happened, so for that I can only thank God and keep praying for the both of them.

I'd like to thank everyone for all of the well wishes and prayers for the twins. I know it helped, and we still have far to go so keep those prayers coming!

No comments: