Catching up (from April 3-10)

Since my last post we've been to see Dr. Dungy-Poythress in Indianapolis, back to Cincinnati for more testing, and back to Indy a couple more times. Every appointment has confirmed our decision to not move forward with fetal surgery. The girls have continued to look good in every ultrasound and ECHO we've had.


During our last visit to Cincinnati, Chris and I had a lot more confidence in what we wanted to do; that is, avoid surgery unless absolutely necessary. We also learned that we could ask for things from the medical staff and pretty much get what we asked for every time. Rather than chance getting a doctor who was completely unfamiliar with our case, we asked to see Dr. Jaekle, the doctor who did our amnioreduction. We were able to see him, and he told us again that we'd made the right decision. He was very happy with how the girls looked. He thought that Elise's cord was doing better then others had told us. Buoyed, we went on to our ECHO appointment.


We asked to have Regina conduct our ECHO. She was the sonographer who'd done all of our ECHOs except for the one with the elevated Tei index. Regina was available, so we were pleased to see her again. She told us, "I heard they tried to 'laser you' last week." We asked her if we could speak to a cardiologist after the ECHO, and again our request was honored. The cardiologist came in and told us that our ECHO looked good. We asked him about the Tei index and he told us that it can be affected by which sonographer does the exam. He said that even with the fluctuations of Anne-Claire's numbers he would consider them to all be stable. This week her numbers were lower than last. When we asked what the numbers were this week, he said it should tell us something that he didn't remember the specific numbers. We also asked about long term damage to Anne-Claire's heart because of TTTS. He said that babies with TTTS are usually not followed-up with further ECHOs by the Fetal Care Center, but that he never saw pediatric cardiology patients who had had TTTS in utero. We were encouraged by our conversation.


We went on to our meeting with the fetal surgeon, Dr. Crombleholme. While he agreed that our girls were stable, he did not go so far as to say they were doing well. He wanted us to return to Cincinnati once or twice more for ECHOs but said if surgery was not an option for us then we didn't have to return. We ultimately decided that surgery was not for us. We're prepared to wait and see how far we can get before the girls show signs of needing to be delivered and delivering them at that point. To that end, I am being admitted to the hospital for the duration of my pregnancy so that we can monitor the babies closely enough to catch anything life threatening that comes up.

We continue to trust God and know that He holds us and our girls in His hands. Hospitalization will be hard on all of us, but ultimately, is worth the precious gifts of Anne-Claire and Elise.