Henry's Cath

Henry had a cath procedure the morning of April 28th and he did great! Dr. Hubble completed the procedure and it lasted three hours! We were a little nervous when the nurse called out to the waiting room after two hours, but she just informed us that Dr. Hubble was being "very thorough"... which we are all in favor of! Like last time, the doctor met with us after the procedure was over to go over pictures of Henry's heart via computer/video. He reported overall the findings were positive, reiterated the purpose of the test was to look at the overall function of Henry's heart, look at the pulmonary arteries (PAs) for growth, and look at the shunt placed last year. Dr. Hubble was impressed with the growth of Henry's PAs and reported low dependence on the collaterals remaining. The collaterals were how Henry was moving blood to his lungs before the PAs were discovered, so this is great that the PAs are doing all the work now. Dr Hubble reported in terms of children diagnosed with pulmonary atresia (one of the heart defects Henry was diagnosed with in addition to Tetrology of Fallot) Henry has gone from one end of the spectrum to the opposite end- initially having thought he had no PAs to having healthy sized PAs post-shunt. This improves Henry's options for surgical repair in the future. He had not measured the size of Henry's PAs at that time, so he made no guesses on future surgical options. Our cardiologist is out on vacation for two weeks, so the surgical team will not discuss Henry's case until Friday 5/21/10... a bit longer of a wait than we hoped, but Henry is doing fine so no rush. Until then, we'll just eat a lot of cookies (see below picture!).

Funny side story... during our pre-op appointment last week Henry was climbing the walls with curiosity and exploring every corner of our clinic room. At some point during the visit Henry pushed the bottom of a non-descript metal box affixed to the wall, which we thought nothing of at the time. Minutes later security came into the room and informed our provider that the "panic button" had been activated and confirmed that all was well:) Our Henry!


Thanks for all our thoughts and prayers!


-K, J and H