tomorrow (wednesday) morning this sweet baby is going to have surgery
please pray
here is her story
(written by her parents)
Ruby came down with a cold around Dec. 28th, it turned into pneumonia, and we checked her into the hospital. The doctors put her on oxygen, her heart rate went up, and they heard a heart murmur. They gave her an EKG and discovered she has a rare heart defect called Truncus Arteriosus.
Basically, the two large tubes (the pulmonary artery and the aorta) that go into your heart begin in utero as one larger tube and then later split, but with Ruby they stayed together. As a result her oxygenated and un-oxygenated blood is getting mixed up, which means her body isn't running as efficiently as it should. Also, as a side effect, since those two tubes are supposed to go into different chambers in her heart, the one large tube prevented the inside wall of the heart from completely forming. Her surgery will repair that hole, move the large tube to one side, and put in an artificial tube to go to the other side.
It's a definite blessing that she got sick, because this condition could have been fatal if it had gone undetected for another three to six months.
Up until January 19th, Ruby had been on a ventilator and a feeding tube, but now she's off of both, is relatively stable, and we're planning on going to Charleston this week (around the 28th), having surgery a couple of days later, and then returning to Greenville with our fully functional baby a few weeks after that.
Basically, the two large tubes (the pulmonary artery and the aorta) that go into your heart begin in utero as one larger tube and then later split, but with Ruby they stayed together. As a result her oxygenated and un-oxygenated blood is getting mixed up, which means her body isn't running as efficiently as it should. Also, as a side effect, since those two tubes are supposed to go into different chambers in her heart, the one large tube prevented the inside wall of the heart from completely forming. Her surgery will repair that hole, move the large tube to one side, and put in an artificial tube to go to the other side.
It's a definite blessing that she got sick, because this condition could have been fatal if it had gone undetected for another three to six months.
Up until January 19th, Ruby had been on a ventilator and a feeding tube, but now she's off of both, is relatively stable, and we're planning on going to Charleston this week (around the 28th), having surgery a couple of days later, and then returning to Greenville with our fully functional baby a few weeks after that.
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