All Done

Sam's cath is over!  He did great.  Everything went pretty much as expected, and the doctor seemed pretty happy with Sam's overall heart function.  While his left pulmonary artery is still stubbornly small, Sam has good pressures and a large right pulmonary artery.  According the cath doctor, Sam is a likely candidate for the Fontan surgery--the third and hopefully final major open-heart surgery.  Also, the cath doctor is hoping that Sam will not need further intervention until the Fontan.

Here is a picture from the cath--you can see the difference in size between the left and right pulmonary arteries (dyed for the cath):

What is perhaps most alarming about this picture is that there appears to be a small, dark swan swimming around in Sam's upper ribcage.  Hmm.

Because of the discrepancy between his left and right pulmonary arteries, however, Sam will likely experience some complications after his Fontan and have a lengthy hospital stay (at least a month), but he is squarely in the candidate range.  He just needs to keep growing and gain about five more pounds.  In the world of hypoplastic left heart syndrome, this is what we call cautiously optimistic news.  My favorite moment with the doctor, though, was when he told us that Sam is a "very popular guy around here."  He is a pretty popular guy with us, too.

Right now, Sam is playing with his portable DVD player.  He just sucked down some Pediasure and seems to be feeling alright, though a bit out of it.  His many "friends" in the cardiac progressive care unit were quite excited to see him, and even more excited that he managed to stay out of the hospital for so long. With a little luck, in a couple of hours he'll snuggle up with Wubbie, get a good night's sleep, and go home tomorrow so he can get back to his favorite hobby: sitting on the cat.

Thank you for all of your prayers, wishes, and good thoughts.