heart cath.

so it was back to the hospital for darla jane. we were scheduled to check in on tuesday, july 5th for her heart catherization. she got anxious and her oxygen saturation went down even lower on monday the 4th so after talking with the drs. we decided it would be best for her to come in then just in case the levels went down even more over night. So...darla jane and her mom spent 4th of july at the hospital. She went to sleep just in time for me to see the fireworks across the utah valley from the hospital window. not a bad view actually. She stayed stable throughout the night and was lined up for a heart cath at 11: We stopped formula at 4: am and she was able to drink pedyalite until 8:. Then she couldn't eat anything. The cath. before her ran long and we weren't able to take her down until 12:30. She was HUNGRY and mad. When she wasn't crying she would give us this face. LOVE it... her "you better not mess with me if you know what's good for you" face.

and here she is, i'm sure thinking "are you really sending me back into one of those rooms again?"

the cath was successful. There actually ended up being to areas that needed attention. An area in her aorta that they were able to stretch with the balloon and then a kink in her sano shunt that they fixed with a metal, mesh stent. The pressures in her heart went down to around 50 from up over 100. Providing a much better blood flow through the heart and into her lungs. We were able to keep her around 80 on her oxygen saturation on just 1/4 liter of oxygen at the hospital. She responded well throughout the night and the next morning so on Wednesday, July 6th we got to go back home.

AND through out the night at home and all of today we actually turned the oxygen OFF. and she has stayed, for the most part, in the low 80s and just a bit in the high 70s!! We are SOO happy about that.
We are hoping that with her oxygen levels up where they are we will be able to hold off surgery another month or a month and a half. The dr. did say that because her body is now more prone to the narrowing that he doesn't think she will make it much longer than that but little miss has proved them wrong before why not now?!

A month from now she will be 4 months old though, which is within the range of when the generally do the surgery (which is 4 -6 months)... so we feel ok about that. She would even be ok, the dr. felt, if she needed to do it sooner since she is doing so well on her weight gain now. She is just over 11 lbs and 11 lbs is the bottom end of where they really feel comfortable with going ahead with the surgery. We are happy with things.

I also saw this quote at the hospital. I thought it was great because there are so many who have physically touched darla jane's heart while at the same time she has spiritually touched so many more hearts... we sure do love her!

And for now, she is just happy to be home and asleep on her own couch.

thank you, again and always, for all the prayers. prayer works. I know that because I get to see a beautiful smiling face from my little baby (and 3 more pretty cute kids) every day.