Last night Grair finally made it home. After 12 days in the hospital, it feels great to be back in our comfortable surroundings! Our stay back at home doesn’t come without some extra baggage, though. We’re stocked full of strong antibiotics that we administer three times a day. Grair has a central line (essentially a more permanent IV) in his arm that connects through a vein into his bloodstream. With thorough cleaning and a...

Today’s transesophageal echocardiogram indicated Grair has a very small (3-4mm) vegetation growth inside his stent. It doesn’t appear to be limiting any flow, but does confirm endocarditis. Dr. Hamilton (our normal pediatric dentist) came to Children’s today to do the dental procedure. It turns out Grair’s teeth weren’t as bad as Dr. Hamilton predicted. He found no sign of infection, and didn’t have to...

Progress is being made, albeit at a slow pace. Today we got news that Grair’s blood results measuring new growth of strep viridans was negative once again. This is good news, as it now means we can begin to move forward with the next steps. The next steps involve 3 tasks, each of which Grair has to be completely sedated: The cardiologists need to do an transesophageal echocardiogram Dental caps must be put on Grair’s teeth and...

Grair is doing great and feeling good!  He’s getting tired of being in his room and playing iPad (never thought I’d be typing that, HA). We are able to walk the halls and go to the river in the lobby which has been a huge blessing!  Yesterday we were hopeful that today we could “piggy back” three procedures in the O.R. under sedation.  One, a transesophageal Echocardiogram to look at the back of the heart to make...

From swimming lessons on Thursday to echo’s on Friday afternoon to being admitted at Children’s by Friday evening; it’s been an adventure! Since November Grair has had ongoing fevers with no real source/explanation. We now have a source and a course of treatment, thank goodness! Grair has developed a blood infection that has required attention immediately to protect his heart from becoming infected. So yesterday, Saturday Grair...

After the stent procedure, we found out that the ventricle pressures still read high. So, on Saturday the doctors ran some more tests, including another echo. This echo revealed that Grair’s outflow pressure (the pressure of blood flow coming out of the pulmonary valve to the lung) was indeed high, but not dangerously high. Again, this is now likely a outcome of the pulmonary valve conduit starting to become too small for Grair. The good...

It might have taken 6 hours (instead of the projected 3-4), but the the stent is in. The process involved placing Grair under anesthesia and attempting to expand the narrowing of the his pulmonary valve. Coming into the procedure, we knew the tube where the pulmonary valve is located had narrowed. It was a 12mm tube and we came to find that at one part it had narrowed to 6mm. This was causing a dangerously high pressure inside Grair’s...