Valve is in!

 The valve is in and it all went well. They ended up putting a 23mm valve and 2 stents in. 

It looks like her old valve pretty much wasn’t working any more so that was putting more strain on her heart, which means this was definitely the right decision. It was hard to know whether to figure that her being more tired was from a leaky valve or maybe her carbon dioxide levels getting too high during sleep. The sleep study was able to rule out the carbon dioxide theory and now the cath results confirm that the valve was very leaky. Dr. Martin says that she is hopeful it will last a long time because it is fairly large for someone her size. 

We found out that her conduit is actually an aortic cadaver conduit. We had thought it was a pig one so that was interesting to learn.  The valve they put in is a sapien valve which I guess is made from some part of a cow. 

The biggest risk now is bleeding at the cath site. She has to lay flat for the next 6 hours.

Can’t even begin to tell you how relieved we are that they were able to put a valve in via catheter instead of having to do an open heart surgery. 

Thank you all for the faith and prayers and love!