Posted by Jack Drum on January 03, 2003 at 17:42:11:
The following is a letter from Anne, Courtney's mother. Those of you who have been with us for over a year will remember her from last year.
Jan 3 2002, at Mayo's she underwent the Maze, and another surgery to correct congenital heart defects she had been fighting since birth. She was 19 at the time and had already had several heart surgeries. On her one year anniversary Anne was letting us know how she was doing.A Great big hello to everyone,
It has been a long time since I posted an update and I do apologize. I have
been in school full time carrying 7 classes and 18 credit hrs. It was a
really rough semester. This semester will be much of the same. I am trying
to finish my BSN in nursing and just decided to go at it full force. Also my
mother has been sick and on life support since Nov 4th and that has kept us
all quite busy as well.I did not want to let today go by without celebrating Courtney's anniversary
of her surgery with all of you who supported me so much during all of
Courtney's health problems and surgery last yr. Her surgery was last Jan 3rd
at Mayo Clinic for those of you who don't remember. Surgery began at 12 noon
and she came out of surgery at 12 midnight. It was a long and excruciating
day for all of us. Dr. Puga converted her old Fontan over to the new Total
Cavo Pulmonary Connection using both Vena Cavas, a bi-directional Glen shunt,
and the Fontan. She also underwent the new Maze procedure which is an open
heart surgical procedure to try and cure abnormal arrhythmias, especially
atrial fib. She also had a dual epicardial pacemaker implanted and had a lot
of her right atrium excised, or removed, because of the gross enlargement
from being overworked for so many years. Some of you may remember that her
pacemaker has 4 leads and that the atrial leads did not end up working as
they were unable to sense due to the damage done to the right atrium after
being stretched and having so many arrythmias for the year and a half prior
to surgery.Courtney is doing wonderfully today! She turns 21 in April and looks and
feels great. The surgery, I must say was a complete success. It was a hard
decision between the surgery or transplant. We all feel we made the right
choice. She will still need the transplant someday but hopefully it will
still be a few yrs away. The surgeons and cardiologist could not tell us if
the surgery, as risky as it was, would help the heart failure or just the
arrhythmias. But it definitely helped her heart failure as well. She is
able to do much more than she could before surgery. All total, she has lost
15lbs of water weight since this time last year! This summer she completed 3
months of cardiac rehab and that helped her immensely. She has had only 2
bouts of atrial fib since her surgery and both times she was able to convert
on her own overnight with just rest and no antiarrhythmics. She has never
had to take any antiarrhythmics since her surgery. She was on 3, and still
breaking through, before surgery. Some of you may recall that she had around
30 cardioversions (heart shocked with the paddles) in 1 year. She does get
tachycardia frequently but it usually only last for 10 or 15 minutes. We may
have to end up medicating her for that. If we do that could present a
problem because when a person goes on antiarrhythmics one of the side effects
is bradycardia (low heart rate), because her atrial leads in the pacemaker
are not working she would be paced continuously from the ventricles which is
not good in a Fontan pt. who depend on their one ventricle. It causes her
blood pressure to drop very low. So we are hoping not to have to treat the
tachycardia otherwise it would mean another surgery to try and reposition the
leads and now that they are epicardial leads, and not in the pulmonary veins,
it would require another open heart surgery. Hopefully things will stay as
stable as they have been and she can continue on with school. Se is enrolled
half time at our community college as that is all she can handle right now.
She loves it and is really enjoying life. She commented to me many times
this Holiday season about how much better she feels this year and how a big
weight has been lifted from her. We are truly blessed, God has been so good
to us!I think of you all often and wanted to thank all of you for helping us,
especially me, through the last couple of years. Your support has been
invaluable and something I will never forget. Love to all of you. I will be
on break until Jan 14th and hope to catch up with some of you before the
craziness starts all over again.Take care
everyone,
Anne
- Re: Anne's Update on Courtney Ed Wehan 14:51:46 1/04/2003 (0)