Something Hopeful

Well, we've had a bit of good news! We're not ready to go crazy, but we are happy to have a little glimmer of something good.

I spoke with the pediatric cardiologist at Dartmouth Hitchcock, Dr. Sadr, this morning. She called because she had heard back from Boston on the tape of our echo. Apparently, the tape made the rounds to quite a few docs at Children's. None of the doctors, save one, had ever seen anything like it. Apparently, the rarity/issue is with the fact that Annie's heart is showing no dysfunction -- only the unexplained thickening of the left ventricle's lining. They have never seen this type of thickening without accompanying dysfunction in the heart, if I understood everything correctly. In any event, the good news comes from the one doctor who had seen something similar before: in that case, the thickening resolved itself completely during the pregnancy and the baby had no issues at all!

To make things even better, Dr. Sadr told me that the doctor who has seen this before is Dr. Jami Levine. That happens to be the pediatric cardiologist we already have an appointment with on Monday afternoon. Now, more than ever, we are looking forward to getting to Boston and talking to the docs there.

I had prepared myself before speaking with Dr. Sadr, telling myself to expect the letdown of hearing that the doctors in Boston had agreed with her diagnosis. Once again, I was shocked by what she told me and unable to gather my thoughts quickly enough to ask many questions. My main question at this point is if we are still treating this as EFE. ??? Is that still the diagnosis? Is it the diagnosis now only because they don't have a better diagnosis to fit this situation? We hope to get the answers to these questions in Boston. Meanwhile, Dr. Sadr said the recommendation from Boston was that we go with what she has set up for me -- another echo in about 4 weeks to monitor the situation.

No matter what, it seems as if we have been given at least one glimmer of hope for a positive outcome. We'll take it!