Ok, I was able to get Lydie into the cardiologist, last week. He talked me down from Defcon 5. :) She is actually in heart failure "But that's just what we call it...." (Relax, Mom?? Right.) Her heart is just working really hard and it is affecting her body, as I said before. But, it's also not uncommon, and it doesn't mean she's going to die or anything. He gave us some medicine to get rid of some of the weird symptoms that were alarming me and the pediatrician. Hopefully they will help her body AND she'll start to eat better. We also quadrupled the amount of formula we're adding to her breastmilk. So basically she gets a chocolate shake calorie haul every meal. We have 2 lbs to gain optimally for surgery, but if she doesn't respond to the medications we may look at moving the surgery up, anyway. The feeding tube thing is always an option if she stops eating enough, but he didn't think they would admit us to the hospital for that clear until surgery--she'd just be on one at home. In any case we're trying to avoid it. They tell me that eating is like running for her, and she just does it 7-8 times a day for 60-90 min... no big deal! Poor thing. She's tough! She really really REALLY can't get sick, so nobody visit us ever, and someone adopt the two boys, k? Haha. Actually I just bought some facial masks and am about ready to say nobody but Mom and Dad can come in Lydie's room. An illness would be 1) super scary and 2) put the surgery back TWO MONTHS. So we're doing all we can to avoid that. We have not scheduled the surgery yet---they usually schedule them 6 weeks out, though, so he told me it could be "soon." I have my next appointment with the pediatrician in 2 weeks and the cardiologist in 3, if all goes well.
In positive news, I asked, again, what things will look like for her after the surgery, and it's super optimistic. She shouldn't be any more susceptible to illness than a regular kid with DS, which is a huge blessing because some of these heart babies are very very vulnerable all their lives. And the problems that she has are fixable. They keep telling me that, and after reading about what some other families have to live with--I will TAKE IT. Man, life can be really hard. So, anyway, onward we go! Thinking chubby, healthy thoughts!
It's crazy, but it won't last forever. We're going to get this girl through this and she's going to change the world. She already makes ours so much brighter. Like, seriously. She's the best, cutest, happiest baby.
