Matters of the Heart

Well, we managed to get too busy at the end of the week and haven't had a chance to update you all on Berkeley's heart.  We had our first visit to the Heart Center for Children at Medical City, Dallas, last Wednesday.  The doctors there were great.  It's been very encouraging to meet the folks who will help us take care of Berkeley's health as she grows, from our own pediatrician to the many specialists that we're starting to meet.  God is really taking care of us with great doctors and resources in that regard.

Anyway, you don't care about our doctors.  You want to know how Berkeley's heart is.  So here we go.  We knew when Berkeley was less than a day old that she had at least a partial hole in her heart that had a chance to be "complete", which is just another way of saying that there's a hole all the way through a wall inside her heart.  We also knew that this could possibly just grow and heal itself over time or that it might require surgery to repair.  The appointment this past week filled in a lot of grey areas for us and answered a lot of questions.

First, yes Berkeley's heart has a "complete" hole from one side to the other.  Here's a picture to help illustrate what's going on inside her heart:  

In the picture, you can see the left side and right side of the heart, separated by a wall of muscular tissue.  You can also see two valves leading from these chambers of the heart on up into the arteries.  In Berkeley's heart, the wall of tissue is not fully formed, leaving a large opening between the two sides of her heart.  As a result, those two separate valves you see in this picture, are actually one large common valve in her heart.  We got to see all of this on a sonogram of her heart and watch it pump.  It was pretty amazing.  

Now, before anyone gets worried that her heart is just going to stop or anything like that, let's explain a few things.  First, her heart is in no greater risk than yours or mine of suddenly stopping.  That is to say, it could happen to any of us, but this condition doesn't necessarily make that any more likely.  If her heart began to have problems, it would be a progressive failure over time, caused by simply having to work harder to keep up.  There would be signs that this is happening, and there would be ways to correct it.  The main thing that you look out for in a condition like this is the oxygen levels of the blood.  Berkeley's heart is allowing the oxygenated blood coming in from the lungs to mix with the unoxygenated blood that's returning to the heart from the rest of the body.  However, testing showed her blood oxygen levels at 100%.  That is oustanding!

So what's the next step?  Well, it was determined that surgery is absolutely what Berkeley needs to repair her heart.  The hole will be repaired partly with Berkeley's own tissue and partly with a synthetic Dacron fabric.  The heart tissue will grow around this fabric as she grows, and it will never need to be replaced or have a bigger piece put in  (I asked the doctors about that just for you).  The second part of the surgical repair is to take that one common valve her heart has formed, and gently form that back into the two separate valves.  

All of this will be done sometime just after Christmas, once Berkeley is a little chunkier.  Let's be honest, we're ALL a little chunkier after the holidays, so that makes it a good time for this.  Anyway, her surgery will be done at Medical City, Dallas, by a specialist who only does heart surgeries on infants and children.  He's one of the best that there is, and I'm very much looking forward to meeting him and peppering him with questions about the heart surgery.  I'm sure he'll be able to tell us a lot more and give us some nifty visual aids, like the heart diagram I posted above.

In between now and surgery time, we'll be going back to the Heart Center for Children once a month for them to check Berkeley out and look at a sonogram of her heart.  We're taking the same approach to this that we did with the Down Syndrome.  This is simply part of the path God has laid out for Berkeley (and us), and we're just taking it as it comes.  I don't think we're too worried about it, and we're trusting God to continue to hold Berkeley's heart in His hands and to help her heal.  If any of you have any questions or want to know more (or if you need more visual aids), feel free to ask.  I think the more we talk about this, the more we are forced to educate ourselves, and that is a good thing.  We'll keep updating the blog on the heart as we learn more, so that will be probably at about a monthly interval, based on our appointment schedule with the Heart Center.