It's hard for me to write this, and it's not like we didn't know she would need more surgery, but I guess I was still blindsided today.
Fi was a trooper for the apt, and it seemed like it would be a quick one. Ms Sarah was almost done with Fi's echo when Dr Yang came in. He was saying how she's so lucky because things have remained pretty stable, aortic stenosis is still moderate, leak is still mild and her CoA repair is still looking great. After Ms Sarah finished Dr Yang looked over the images to make sure that everything he needed was there. Then he said, "well that's different from last time". He then personally redid the entire echo, my heart sank because I knew something was up.
I knew what it was too, as he went over the same part over and over. He was looking at the sub-aortic membrane. He said since her valve still looks okay we can come back in 6 months, at that point we'll schedule a trans-esophageal echo to get a better picture and decide if it's time for surgery. He wants to try to preserve her valve, so he sounded like the best plan will probably be surgery sooner than later.
As he was talking about is Laz had a ton of questions, but not me, because I know what it means, Fi's heart sister Jillian is having sub-AS surgery today. I've decided to refer to it the SFM (stupid f*ing membrane), even with surgery they often come back, saving the valve means another surgery for that down the line, or if the valve has to go at that time future surgeries to replace the valve.
You know the other shoe will drop eventually when you have a kid with a complex heart defect, but it still hurts just as bad when it does.
