Heart Cath #2

Livie is amazing.  In case you didn't already know.  As of right now she is awake and laying fairly still which is a miracle.  She has a yucky cough (normal after intubation) which is the only thing that seems to be ticking her off.  She's drinking her apple juice happily and just doing close to perfect.
The cath itself went well.  She did everything normal, yay!  The results are as follows.  Olivia's left pulmonary artery (LPA) was stenosed (aka narrowed, don't I sound smart?) They tried ballooning it but it didn't hold so they placed a stent in there to open it up.  It is now the same size as the right pulmonary artery (RPA)  Dr. Gray, the cath doc, said that she may (he said "may" but sounded like it was more likely than not) need more caths to replace the stent as she grows.  For those wondering, this is caused by scar tissue.  As he put it, she is growing but the scar tissue is preventing the LPA from doing the same.  He also said that placing the stent may help it to grow on its own and if not we'd be back to the cath lab eventually.  I also learned that it's a good thing to report a desat even if she's not desatting out of her bounds.  Both Dr. Gray and Dr. McCandless were very pleased at how early we caught this (I reported her normal sat level decreasing at her appt a week after it occured.)  Glad I know what to look for and I know that she may have a little trend going on.  Olivia also had some teeny tiny collaterals but they were insignificant enough they didn't need to be coiled off.  The placement of the stent has landed us on the 3rd floor overnight but as long as Liv continues to be normal we'll be heading home tomorrow morning.  We had been slightly worried she'd need a transfusion like she did last time which would keep us another day but she won't.  As Dr. Gray put it, she is an entirely different baby than the last time he saw her.  He and his team remembered her from last time.  Pretty impressive huh!  He couldn't get over her dimples.  But no transfusion because this time she is stable, healthy, and happy.