Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Texas Children’s Hospital Houston

James is now three and a half years old and is doing great. He is a boy full of energy and definitely keeping up with his big brother. If you didn’t James had a heart defect, you would never be able to tell.

James 3 1/2 years old

On Wednesday May 23rd, 2018 we went to Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston again. Yes, again. We have been preparing for James Fontan surgery and we believed he was going to have it this summer. Dr. Forbess who performed James previous surgeries is not at Dallas Children’s Medical Center anymore, he got a new job in Chicago and left. We really like Dallas Medical Center and we liked Dr. Forbess.


Another option we have considered and our second choice is to have James surgery performed in Houston by Dr. Heinle. That is why we were at Texas Children’s Hospital again. We met with Dr. Heinle (surgeon) and Dr. Moodie (cardiologist), they told us what they believe is best for James at this time. They think it is better we wait a year so James can grow and see if his blood pressure goes down. Since James had quite a high blood pressure in his lungs it created lateral veins in his heart. Dr. Nugent at Dallas Children’s MC was able to fuse some of James veins during the heart cath last year, but he created more this year which Dr. Nugent again could fuse when he had another heart cath this past March. In Dallas they said his blood pressure has gone down and weight is up, but not quite as much as hoped. James also started on a new meditation that will help the blood pressure go down, so they wanted to monitor that for a little longer.


We really liked Dr. Heinle, Dr. Moodie, and the rest of the straff at Texas Children’s Hospital. We made our decision. Now we know when James next surgery will happen. It will be next summer in Houston.