Getting Closer

On the drive home today, I checked our voicemail and we still had not heard back from Children's. With hours in the car ahead of us, I called the nurse who worked with us a couple weeks ago. I was surprised (and thrilled) that I actually reached her and not her voicemail. She instantly knew who I was and, once I explained what I was looking for, she instantly pulled up Clare's information. So we got some answers today!

The interventional radiologist is going to perform a catheter embolization of the blood vessels. The nurse did not know whether the radiologist was going to use a coil (made of either stainless steel or platinum) or liquid glue to repair the vessels, so she is going to get back to us tomorrow with that information. Clare will have a pre-op day the day before the procedure and may have to stay overnight following the embolization to be sure the procedure worked. A cardiac anesthesiologist (versus a general pediatric anesthesiologist) will be on board, given Clare's medical history. We will meet with the anesthesiologist during pre-op, so will find out then exactly what method of anesthesia will be used. The nurse admitted that she did not have all the answers for us as this is a rare case (always lovely to hear those words!). She did say that she believed the anesthesia did not need to be as "deep" as if Clare was undergoing surgery, so hopefully Clare will not need to be intubated for anesthesia. The risks of a catheter embolization are less than those of doing an open surgery on the vessels, so we pray that the radiologist can indeed make this a one-shot deal.

Now we wait for the scheduler to call again, so we can actually get this procedure over with!