Tessa came home from China able to do what most of us can't. She could give 3 thumbs up! She had two thumbs on her right hand. This is usually associated with a congenital heart defect which she also had. Her heart repair was done in China when she was about 4 years old. She was found when she was approximately 2 years and 3 months old. Such a beautiful little girl...and I am sure very sad and scared. This was the day she entered the orphanage according to our records.
She then had surgery on her heart. Which we did not know for sure exactly what they did....that can be frustrating. We know that she had a hole in the lower chambers of her heart that they repaired. However we are not sure if she had something wrong with her Aorta that they repaired or if she has a defect to it. On the Echocardiograms and MRI's of her chest, the pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Anitha Parthiban, who we have been seeing since Tessa arrived home, thinks that her aorta might have been tied off during her surgery in China. However, there is an aneurysm there that we have monitored every year since she came home. It is called a Sinus of Valsalva and the doctor has monitored it very carefully. She has recommended that Tessa not play any contact sports where she could get a direct, hard hit to her back or chest as if that area were to rupture...it would be catastrophic :( Not a good feeling knowing that.
On her last visit with Dr. Parthiban the doctor said that she is going to present Tessa's case to her panel of other pediatric cardiologists to see what they suggest to do. If we should just watch it or if we should become more proactive and maybe do a heart cath or open her chest to make sure that it is okay.
Three years ago Tessa decided it was time to have her extra thumb removed. We had told her that if she wanted to have the surgery to have it removed, just tell us and we would set it up. That time came. She was such a trooper about the whole process. Tessa and I had to be at the hospital very early in the morning for her surgery so we spent the night in Kansas City.
She had a pretty red cast on for almost 6 weeks. Then they put another cast on for a couple more weeks. Tessa was not too fond of the noise the saw made when cutting the cast off. And from the look on her face, I am not sure she was really pleased with the new thumb...which of course was still swollen and healing.
The orthopedic surgeon said that it was a good thing we had it removed when we did as one thumb would have grown and the other would not. That would have made them different sizes. As it was, the very end joint by her fingernail is fused, it does not move. This had to occur because the bones/joints in the two thumbs were pretty messed up. So the physician did what she could to give Tessa as normal of thumb as she could.
Our girl is a fighter. She is an angel wrapped in a small body. She is not only beautiful outside she is beautiful inside as well. We love you Tessa "Louise" JiXing....to the moon and back!!
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