Here we go again...

We took Jake to his cardiology check-up at Texas Children's today and met his new doctor, Dr. Altman. The news was not what we wanted to hear. Back in November his echo had shown that he had what is called a sub valvular aortic membrane which basically a piece of skin that has developed beneath his aortic valve. The membrane had grown exponentially when Dr. Altman looked at his echo today and is blocking his aortic valve. Its also causing his mitral valve to leak and somewhat undoing the repair of his valve he had done at 10 months old. She is suggesting surgery soon...probably the end of May or June. She's contacting our surgeon, Dr. Heinle today about it and will present Jake's case at the weekly surgery meeting next Monday. She'll call us back then to let us know their opinion, but she is predicting they will agree it needs to be done soon. They will do open heart surgery again and remove this membrane and possibly work on the mitral valve again as well. There is a 30% chance the membrane will grow back which is why they are often reluctant to do this surgery, but she said in Jake's case its severe enough to be very necessary. 

I had a feeling something was not right, but I was hoping it was me just being an overprotective mother. I had noticed when Jake was playing with other kids that he would often be the only one sweating. That was an early symptom before as well.  His heart just has to work so much harder than normal. Also, Ty took Jake to the ER last month when he dislocated his elbow and the doctor let Ty listen to his murmur. It was very loud and the doctor was much more interested in Jake's heart than his elbow....another sign things were not right.

So, please pray that his surgery will be done at the optimal time. Pray that we'll have the patience to wait for the surgery date (that was so hard last time) and of course pray that Jake's heart will be healed. He's such a tough kid, I just hate that he'll have to go through this yet again.