Dr D

27 June

We went to discuss the results of the angiogram with Dr D.

He showed us incredible video footage of inserted dye moving around the arteries between Little S's heart and lungs and it was clear that the 'piping' wasn't right.

Bad news - there was little in the results to change the initial diagnosis so Dr D reiterated that Little S was going to need major heart surgery and would be likely to need to stay in hospital for about a week afterwards.

The initial operation would be to unhook the arteries that Little S has developed to supply her lungs, fuse the two extra arteries together and plumb them back into the heart where the valve should be.

If that goes to plan then there would be further surgery to create a valve and to close the hole in Little S's heart to get her close to normal plumbing. 

However, there is no guarantee - Dr D mentioned that surgery at the hospital for this kind of operation has a less than 5% mortality rate - mortality rate!

Faced with a statistic like that we felt unable to commit to what rationally must be the right thing to do - Dr D suggested we get a second opinion and I mentioned that we were already informally in contact with Dr E so we'd ask him.