Wisdom Heart

This afternoon, Sophia had the pre-op for her heart cath tomorrow. Anesthesiologists are always really careful about sedating kids if they have had any cold-like symptoms in the past month or so. Therefore, they require a physical exam, usually the day before, to judge whether Sophia is fit for the procedure.
As I had mentioned in a previous post, Sophia has had a cough since the last time we were in the hospital. We saw her pediatrician a week ago and he assured us she wasn't sick. He started treating her with Singulair and Zyrtec, as he attributed her coughing to seasonal allergies. This seems to have made a considerable difference, but the cough still comes back occasionally.
Anesthesia was alright with attributing the cough to allergies and decided to go ahead with the procedure.
Of course, she had to have labs drawn. This is always an awful experience and I was selfishly happy I was at work during the appointment. We have only encountered one or two lab techs and/or nurses who are able to successfully draw labs or insert an I.V. into Sophia without digging around for what seems like an eternity. Sophia is obviously not very happy about being treated as a pin cushion, but, she is a very strong girl.
I am not really sure of all the objectives for the procedure, but I will try to list some of them.
The last time Sophia was in the hospital (when they thought she had pneumonia). They attributed a cloudy spot on her chest x-ray to a possible pseudoaneurysm. This is a tear in the lining of her arterial conduit (the one from her last surgery) that causes an out-pouching of blood in the wall of the artery.
I am assuming, they want to know more about this issue. They may treat it in the cath lab or it may require more surgery. It goes without saying that we, and also her doctors, would like to put off surgery until they could also repair the VSD they were unable to close due to her smaller than expected pulmonary vessels during the last surgery .
This brings us to the next possible issue. Her cardiologist would like to possibly open some of these narrow vessels using a balloon/stent procedure done in the cath lab. This could allow Sophia to show some actual improvement regarding her oxygen saturation. I can't imagine how it would feel to Sophia to have her sats climb above 70s. Her sats have been consistently in the 65% to 75% range since her last surgery, and have never held above the low 80s.
I would say it is also just as likely that they want an accurate picture of the repairs from her last surgery.
I will post when I find something out tomorrow. Hopefully she will tolerate this without complication. It would be nice to avoid an extended hospital stay this time. But, we will take as it comes.
Thanks for all the support we have received so far. I think it is wonderful that we are developing an impromptu community around each others post. Thanks again. -Michael