When we adopted Tessa in 2010 we knew she had a congenital heart defect. We really did not know what it was, only that it had been repaired in China when she was about 4 years old. We never received any information about the surgery and honestly, she was our daughter no matter what.
So after we came home with this girl in September 2010, we took her to see a pediatric cardiologist to see what shape her heart was and if there was anything that we needed to watch. We were really shocked after they did an echocardiogram and then wanted to do a sedated MRI of her heart. Dr. Parthiban told us that it looked like Tcssa had Sinus of Valsalva. This means she has an aneurysm of her aorta that, because we had no records from China, could mean they had tied that aneurysm off during her open heart surgery in China all those years ago. So we monitored that area for 6 years. She had an echo every year and this year we repeated the MRI.
So after the MRI this year, Dr. Parthiban decided that it was time to do a heart catherization on Tessa to really be able to "see" inside her heart. They said that on the MRI, the aneurysm looked like it was pulsating with each heart beat. The doctor wanted to do a heart cath to see if she was going to need to have a patch put on the aneurysm to keep it from bursting. We have been keeping her out of contact sports since she came home because we were concerned that she might get hit in the chest or back really hard by a basketball or something and that aneurysm could rupture and according to Dr. Parthiban she would "bleed out quickly and die right away unless she was in a hospital when it ruptured" It has always been a worry that we keep her safe but yet let her be a child and have fun. So she did Taekwondo and played Volleyball. She was never a fan of basketball playing anyway :) She has always loved to swim and that was a fantastic sport during the summer for her to be on the swim team...plus she is a very fast little fish :)
So November 7th we traveled to Children's Mercy Hospital early in the morning for Tessa to have her heart cath. It was a school day, so her sisters had to go to school. We left right after they left for school on the bus. Dr. Kaine was supposed to do her cath, but he had called in sick that day. They notified us of that just a few minutes before we left to go to Kansas City. We asked if there was another physician who would be doing the cath and we were told that Dr. Abhay A. Divekar would be Tessa's doctor. Her regular cardiologist does not do heart caths.
We are always impressed by Children's Mercy. They have the kid stuff down to a science...guess that is why they are such a good Children's hospital. Dr. Divekar was amazing and we were very impressed with him and his staff. He came in and talked to Tessa and us and told us exacty what they would be doing and off they went. Dad and I went to the waiting room and began the long, to us, wait.
They are very good about calling every hour with an update and very soon after the first update they were done and the doctor and his APRN came down to visit with us and show us the cool photos of Tessa Louise JiXing's amazing heart. So after all this time we find out that she does NOT have an aneurysm...Thank the LORD! What it looks like to them is that she had a congenital aortic fistula that was tied off during her surgery in China. Before it was tied off, her heart was obviously not pumping effectively and the blood was pooling in the right side of her heart. Because of that, they did open heart surgery in China and tied the balloon in the artery off. However they did discover that because her heart was not pumping effectively that she has smaller than normal veins on the right side of her heart. She had a stress test performed and her and her heart did great.
We will have to monitor her heart every year and she will start taking aspirin 81 mg daily along with watching her diet to keep her cholesterol low and exercise to keep her heart in good shape. We have been blessed by this young lady and we are so glad to hear this wonderful news about her heart! We love you to the moon and back!
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