Well....she's all heart, just not all heart.

I know it's been a while since we've posted. A lot has happened in our lives recently. Tracy has happened also. She happens to be infuriating, amazing, growing, pestering, loving, deprecating, joyful, sad, resilient, obstinate. That was just the last hour or so! It seems that so much time has passed since we were in China picking her up. Every day is a new adventure. She is doing so well in school with all her new friends and she seems to be adjusting well still. We finally took her to the pediatric cardiologist in San Antonio last week and were frankly stunned by what we saw and heard. Dr Hospers is an amazing doctor who I had worked with before when I worked on a pediatric floor and we decided to take Tracy to her. Tracy had just caught a viral illness a few days before the appointment and was not feeling her best, but we were shocked when the doctor checked her oxygen saturation and found she was only 83-85%! That was a real eye opener for us. When Dr Hospers did the echocardiogram we found out that she only had a two chambered heart, not a three as we were led to believe!!! She explained the intricacies of her condition in great detail and her general prognosis as best she could. I absorbed it all well but Kortnie is still, I think, trying to come to grasp with all the implications of it all.In the meantime Tracy needs a CT to locate the areas of her body that she is losing oxygenated blood so that it can be corrected in the heart catheterization lab. Dr Hospers says there is no great rush to do this and Tracy is actually doing quite well, but she has little cardiac or pulmonary reserve should she fall ill. Well....that's exactly what happened a few days later. Her viral illness precipitated a case of bronchitis that led her to virtually collapse while we were visiting Kortnie at the hospital.Also, Dr Hospers had started Tracy on a heart medication that would make the workload on her heart easier over time. This really turned out to be a poor time to start this medication with perfect hindsight. The confluence of the new medication lowering her blood pressure, the dehydration from her illness, and the effects of the bacterial infection led to the collapse. She became pale, lethargic, very blue around her lips so we took her to the E.R. at once. After oxygen, IV fluids, and IV antibiotics we had a brand new little girl on our hands. She looked wonderful, was smiling and laughing and all this took about an hour. What I get from this is how little reserve she truly has and it is more than a little bit frightening to consider what the future holds. We at least now know how fragile she really is. Needless to say, we stopped the heart medication for now! We were, I think, just hoping that since she appeared well, she actually was well. Not quite! The possibility of a heart transplant in her future seems likely I'm afraid. Well, I just wanted to update folks about how she is doing, and today she is doing quite well. We can only hope for the best for her future and manage a day at a time since today is all that's given to us.
Scott