After 2 days home from the Maternity hospital, Roy went into heart failure, and he spent the following 2 weeks in the Cardiac ward of the Childrens Hospital in Melbourne. With doses of oxygen, diuretics and other stuff, he improved during the 2 weeks.
Surgery was looking very close at one stage but in the end he was sent home on medication with a hope that he would avoid surgery.
He is on lasix (diuretics), and captopril (to reduce this blood pressure), and polyjoule (a syrup to be given after each breastfeed which is very high in calories). He gets weighed 2 times a week by a nurse that comes to our house. We have to keep him away from infections, and basically reduce anything that is going to make him work too hard. We have to keep him especially rugged up, and avoid big changes in temperature as much as possible to avoid him wasting energy trying to keep warm.
The final decision after 4 echo's was that Roy has Swiss cheese VSD's, or multiple vsd's ranging in size from 3.5mm to 1mm. Each hole on its own is considered small, but because he has several it caused the heart failure. The doctors are hoping, that by waiting one month the holes will spontaneously close or significantly reduce. There is a strong case for this because:
1. The holes are relatively small and if they were in isolation they would probably not have caused him any bother.
2. They're in the more muscular part of the wall which apparently means they can close more readily
3. Being in the muscular part of the wall, surgery would be very difficult at this point, as its hard to locate them through the various muscle fibres.
4. The only surgery they could do now is to put a band on the pulmonary artery, so it is not a complete solution, but would stop the heart failure problems.
