Madeline made it through her procedure well.

Dear friends,

Yesterday Madeline had her catherization procedure and it went well. The process lasted about 5 hours while they sent probes up from her legs, one in an arterial line and one in a venous line to check her out. They did some ballooning in her aorta to widen out a narrowing. They released a contrast dye in various parts of her heart and took xrays to see how her heart is working. They used a pressure probe and were able to get lots of good data but unfortunately no answers for us, only more questions.

They have, once again, circled back around to her left ventricle and whether or not it is sufficient for her. I really want that left ventricle to be big enough. If it is, that means they can repair the holes in her heart and we can go home. If not, there is a whole string of sugeries, ending at some point with a heart transplant. I don’t want Madeline to have to go through this.

With all the stress on Lisa and I, I forget sometimes to look at things from Madeline’s perspective. She awoke from her anesthesia, for the third time in 2 months, with her breathing tube now going in through her nose (it almost looks like it couldn’t fit), and she had this groggy look on her face like: “What the heck?!”. Although she can’t speak or cry, she can sometimes show us by her numbers (desat’s) or by turning dark purple when she doesn’t like something. I really hope she’s tolerating all this well, it would hurt me if she wasn’t.

Michael’s parents had told me about a little girl next to them in the Cardiac ICU. Her name is Lola (Lauren, I thought you’d might want to adopt this girl in prayer). On Weds night last week, Lola coded in the middle of the night and it took the doctors 30 minutes to revive her. I have been praying for Lola, since then. Today, while waiting on the third floor (cardiac) waiting room, we met Michelle and Rich, who turned out to be Lola’s parents. I told them we had been praying for their daughter. Lola is doing better now, but needs another heart surgery at the end of this week before she can be sent home. Please pray for them.

And now we have to meet with the cardiologists again, today at 1pm, to discuss their findings. I fear it will be bad news based on our discussion with the docs last night. Please pray for good news, pray for news that will show us the path to recovery. Pray that we might have more time to let her grow and her left ventricle develop more before Madeline has to go through another surgery.

Grace,
Shanker & Lisa.