The Heart Backstory

June was born with pulmonary stenosis which means the valve connecting the right ventricle of her heart to the pulmonary artery is super narrow.  Her heart has to beat quite hard to pump the blood through this narrowing. If you put your hand on her little chest, you can feel how hard her heart is working.  She has had about 6 echo cardiograms that measure the narrowing of the opening. Since birth, the opening has gotten more and more narrow. (If you want to read more about pulmonary stenosis: https://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/health/p/pvs) 

So good news is that as of now, her heart is still strong and healthy.  If we wait to fix this valve, however, her heart will weaken.  The time to fix it is now!    

So how will they fix it?  Well right after her 2 month birthday, we tried the least invasive procedure which was inserting a balloon through a catheter in her leg and up to her heart.  Three times the cardiac cath doc inflated the balloon in hopes of opening up the valve. The procedure was 0% effective. After the balloons were deflated, the valve when right back to it’s super narrow position.  So onto the next option…cardiac surgery.  

Cardiac surgery is scheduled for Thursday October 17.  There are a few options depending on what they see when they get in there.  They will either do a valvotomy (remove scar tissue on the valve) or valvectomy (remove the valve).  What we do know is that they will open her up on her chest and go through that way…open heart surgery.  After the valve is fixed, they will wire back together her chest cavity. We met her cardiac surgeon and he seems great. He was calm and reassuring. While we are super nervous, meeting Dr. Kaza and hearing about the procedure from him was quite helpful in our mental preparations. Here is a video of Dr. Kaza: https://youtu.be/1Cecx63YjJ8

So recovery is going to be tricky to say the least but we are in super great hands at Boston Children’s.  We’ll post to the blog with updates on our sweet JunieB!