Tuesday, April 19, 2011

What is Really Going on with Aine's Heart????

Ok,
I am getting many great questions from everyone as far as what is really going on with Aine's Heart, how did we find out, what is going to be the final outcome, etc.

I will do my best to explain things, but please feel free to ask further questions & I will do what I can to answer them.

While we were pregnant with Aine, we were told she had a cystic hygroma (summed up: a sack of fluid under the skin. It can be deadly to a fetus if it doesn't go away, but lucky for us hers has shrunk to Almost nothing). After we found out about the cystic hygroma we were sent to a specialty clinic to have further testing done, which is where we found out that she was going to be born with a heart condition (which is what caused the hygroma in the first place - so I guess you can say we were lucky that it formed). Upon further testing we were informed that Aine has a heart condition call TOF (short for Tetrology of Fallot).

TOF is a four part problem with the heart. First; she has a hole in her heart which will need to be surgically repaired when she is between 4-6 months old. Second; she has Pulmonary Stenosis (her pulmonary is too small so blood could not circulate the way that it should). This is the repair that they did when she was 4 days old. They will check the status of the repair when they do her second surgery & determine if there is anything futher that they need to do. Third; her artery is overpowering both sides of her heart, so they will fix that at the same time they fix the hole in her heart. Fourth; due to the artery being positioned incorrectly, the muscle in her heart can become too thick/muscular causing problems later on in life.

I hope this helps answer some questions that you may have regarding Aine's condition.
We are hoping that it will not have too much of an impact on her life as she gets older, but only time will tell.

As I mentioned earlier, if you have questions, please feel free to ask & we will do our best to answer them.

The Caseys.

2 comments:

Jessica W. said...

Thank you for the more detailed information. I'm glad to hear that she is doing well with everything that she has been through. Just wondering, any family history of this condition?

Thinking of you guys...

Nicole said...

No family history.
It is more common than most people realize (including us until we became part of the "broken heart" group).