Heart Failure

After looking at those pictures from my last post, I just knew something was wrong. I just couldn't believe how puffy Lucy looked. Those pics were posted right after a phone call I got from my Dad. He, my mom, big sis and niece were on their way to the airport when he called. He suggested I take Lucy in for a chest x-ray. I kinda yelled at him. Actually, I cried at him but in our family it's interpreted the same way. It stressed me out. With my parents on their way to France and my other sis in Lake Powell the idea of getting a chest x-ray way too stressful. When you get told nothing is wrong so many times you begin to believe it. But after the phone call and looking at those pictures I really felt like we needed to do something.
When Chuck got home that night I had him call Kansas City. I was shocked when they patched him through to an actual cardiologist. He told us to take Lucy to the ER in the morning. So we dropped the other kids off at Chuck's parents house and we headed up o Salt Lake.
We had multiple tests done. They all came back pretty normal except for one. Her BNP. The test measures how hard the heart is working. A normal range is between 0-100 anything above that is considered heart failure. Anything above 900 is considered severe heart failure. Lucy's was 3000. She is now in the ICU on a drug called Milrinone. She was on it after both of her open heart surgeries. It takes some of the work off the heart. She had another BNP this morning and it was down to 2000. So the drug is helping. Because it's a three day weekend here in Utah they won't be giving her an MRI until Tuesday then on Wednesday the will discuss the possibility of a cardiac cath and hopefully have it on Thursday. My parents get back on Friday.
The scary thing is that there was nothing that suddenly changed. She's been grunting a little more than usual, more puffy than usual and for the last two weeks her sats were a little low. But nothing that was screaming "heart failure." We even took her to a pediatrician who told us she wasn't in heart failure a week and a half ago.
The cardiologist kept telling us that it is really good we came in when we did. It makes me sick to think we could have missed this. We were going to spend the weekend at my parents cabin. It would have been really easy to put this off until after our little trip to the cabin. I so glad we listened to that little voice telling us something was wrong.