Cath Day…

Our tiny P had her latest heart cath this week, on Tuesday…her twelfth heart cath!

She also had her heart biopsy. Her two year heart biopsy…our girl is getting ready to celebrate two years post heart transplant!

Tiny P is an old pro at these heart cath procedures now, and everything goes fairly smoothly.

She knows all the nurses and anesthesiologists well, and Dr K, her cath surgeon, is one of her favorites.

When he comes to visit before her procedure, he hangs out in our room, and talks and plays with her, and this time we were going over her procedure, and he asked tiny P if she had any questions for him. She said “yes, I have a question. Did you dress up as a pirate for Halloween?”
He laughed and said “yes, did you have any questions about your cath?”
And she said “no, I don’t want to talk about that.”
Ha!

She heads right in, plays and talks to everyone, and then we head back to the OR. Since it’s a fairly “simple” procedure, I am allowed to carry her into the OR, and get her settled. She hates the mask, but she goes to sleep very quickly.

Sometimes she has a hard time waking up, or needs some heavy pain meds right away, but this time she woke up quickly, and asked for her bottle.
She sometimes has been a little nauseous, but this time she asked for her mac and cheese right away, and then wanted to order more!

After her cath, tiny P has to lay still for six hours, keeping her leg flat and still. This is hard for anyone, but our active four year old says this is her least favorite part. She handles it well every time, though, and watches movies and eats her way through the hours.

She gets lots of visits from her nurses and her favorite social worker, who brought her chocolate to make her happy.

The last couple hours always seem to take the longest… especially since we are also waiting to find out the results from her biopsy.

We found out that tiny P’s pressures have gone up since her last cath, so we will be monitoring that, but everything else looked good!

Finally when the six hours are up, we remove her bandages, and tiny P can get up and move around. We used to stay the night for observation, but lately we have gone home the same day. We always pack a bag just in case though, since we know that if tiny P shows any signs of rejection, she would be admitted right away.

We usually carry her out after being discharged, but our girl has a lot of opinions, and she declared that from now on she would be using a wheelchair…”just like a princess!” Ha!

The best news of our day? I’ll let tiny P tell you…