Today's Fetal Echo (pretty long, just to warn you)

I'm sure you are probably wondering how it went with the fetal echo today. First off, it was much longer than I expected. They told me to plan for at least an hour. My appointment was at 10. I didn't leave Primary's until a little after 12:30. There is sort of a reason it went longer than I planned. One I find somewhat humorous in a way, but I'll get to that later.

It turns out that Dylan does not have Tetralogy of Fallot. Now that I actually remember the word "tetralogy" without thinking about it too hard. Tetralogy of Fallot is a quite common defect. The one he has is apparently more on the rare side, but still common enough to have a name. He has what is known as Truncus Arteriosus (typically just referred to as Truncus). In a normal heart, you have two main arteries that carry blood to other places. One takes blood to the lungs to get oxygen, the other takes blood to the rest of the body. With Truncus, there is only one artery that branches to the lungs and the rest of the body. The vsd (which is basically the most clear thing he has) is almost always present with Truncus. There are several types of truncus. The cardiologist, Dr. Su, said that some believe there are 4 types, others don't really think that there really is a 4th type. Although he said from what he could see (he can't say 100% that it actually is truncus), most likely his would fit into the 4th type category, even though this doctor is one who leans more toward the thinking that there isn't a 4th type.

Russ was about 15 minutes late to the appointment. In fact, they were already doing the echo when he got there. About a half hour later, the two who were doing the echo started to comment to each other about it. Kind of funny when you hear them saying things like, "Gee, I don't know....doesn't make sense to me." Let's just say that Dylan apparently doesn't like to cooperate very well for these things. At times even putting his hand on his chest so it made it harder for them to see. He was in a position that they couldn't see as well as they'd like, which is one reason Dr. Su said he won't say for absolute certain that it is truncus. One decided to go out and talk to Dr. Su about it while the other took more scans, hoping to get better pictures. A few minutes later Dr. Su came in with the first guy and they took more scans. Here again I chuckled as even Dr. Su was saying, "I don't know..." and things like that, and then saying that he shouldn't have complained about the views they were getting when Dylan's hand went on his chest again. He told us that it wasn't the tetralogy like we thought, but from one view it looked like one thing and another it looked like something else so they were looking longer to determine what they thought it was. Russ and I figured they were thinking truncus when that was the thing they said the most.

So around 11:45 they finished the scans and gave me a couple of minutes to walk around and such. It was probably about noon when Dr. Su came in along with a nurse named Kelly to discuss the results. While I was stretching my legs, Russ had waited in the room they had us go to for the talking part and had grabbed some papers they had on truncus and a normal heart and a couple of other things. That turned out to be a good thing since Dr. Su would have grabbed the normal heart flyer and truncus flyer anyway. He explained how the normal heart works and what happens with truncus. Said that if you want to look at the bright side, the one blood vessel opens and closes just as it should. In a lot of cases, they don't.

He did say that I should plan on going to University Hospital to deliver and that he will need surgery within a week or two after birth. They will do an echo on him after he is born so they can know even more. I go back on the 16th for another fetal echo. They probably won't be able to see any more than they did today, and may not be able to see as much because it gets harder to see as the baby gets older, but they want to try. And next time when we go, they will have us tour the PICU. They also pretty much said that for at least the first two weeks I will basically just be pumping instead of nursing. When he is in the PICU, the kids will be allowed to go in for short visits since it is a better time of year. Winter time they wouldn't allow them. Although parents and grandparents are basically allowed in there 24 hours a day.

I'm trying to think if I've forgotten anything. Can't quite think of anything right now. Got distracted from my post by a lady I visit teach. She stopped by to see how things went today. I thought it was very nice of her. Even though the dog was being her usual annoying self and trying to get her to pet her the whole time. Guess I will post more later if I think of anything else.

Oh! Just remembered something. If you go to www.pedcardiology.utah.edu, they have a link there in the bottom corner for fetal stuff and said there are links there with lots of information. Some even have 3D pictures.