Posted by Jack Drum on February 15, 2002 at 22:15:27:
Here is a portion of a mail that I got from Anne, Courtney's mother. It was addressed to all of her update mail list, so I am just posting a portion of it. She was born with heart defects and has been fighting them for 20 years. Some brave family.
Hi everyone,Sorry it has taken me so long to write. Courtney is home now and doing well.
She is still tired and weak but doing good. She is retaining fluid still
but has lost 10 to 12 lbs. She still has a small amount of fluid in both
lungs which we are watching with xray and still has an enlarged and congested
liver. As she recovers over the next few months it should get better. She
ended up being at Mayo a little over 4 weeks. When we got home we were very
busy unpacking, readjusting and taking down Christmas decorations. She had
to go to see her cardiologist in Chicago the day after we returned from
Minnesota. Her cardiologist was thrilled to see her and gave her a great big
hug! We are truly blessed!! The best part is that Courtney doesn't have
arrhythmias anymore!! Hooray!! She still takes a lot of meds but none for
her arrhythmias. She still takes some heart meds to help her function
because surgery didn't help that part and she still will need a transplant
someday but hopefully a long way off. This surgery was mainly to stop the
function in the left ventricle, which is the main pumping part of the heart,
from getting any worse. She has no right ventricle. The arrhythmias and the
meds for the arrhythmias both cause the function to keep getting worse. So
at least we were able to stop that process. They also reduced the size of her
heart by removing part of it and rerouted a lot of things. This helped to
improve blood flow throughout the heart and so she isn't at such a high risk
of having a blood clot and stroke. So overall the surgery was a great
success. We knew going in that the chance of the left ventricular function
improving would be slim. So that is okay. Courtney feels so much better to
have this big surgery behind her. She is so much happier in her everyday
living!! :)
I would just like to thanks ALL OF YOU for your support, phone calls, cards,
flowers and prayers throughout everything. It is wonderful to have such good
friends and really has helped all of us through a very rough period in our
lives. Please continue to keep Courtney in your prayers, that her
arrhythmias won't return on the left side. Remember we chose only to do the
arrhythmia surgery on the right side due to the complications of doing both
sides. Take care everyone!!
- Re: Update on Courtney Kidd. Pat McCarthy 07:10:08 2/17/2002 (0)