Heart ache

Princess will be having heart surgery in a week. I've been mentioning it to people occasionally, flippantly, like it's no big deal. And on the sliding scale of heart surgeries, it is a comparitively small thing.

And yet...

The reason she's having the surgery is this - when we're born, we all have a little duct in our hearts that usually closes by the time we're 5 days old. In our Princess's case, as is the case with many premmie babies, the duct didn't close. It hasn't been a major health issue for her, but it has been recommended that we get the duct closed up nonetheless.

We were offered the option of surgery through her chest - cutting through skin and muscle, prying open her fragile little 4-yr-old's ribcage, finding the wee little duct INSIDE HER HEART and then clamping it closed with a metal clip. Oh yeah, and a painful two-week recovery period. We politely declined that option - well, I think my response was something like "You WHAT?? Over my dead body!!!".

No, we have taken the less eye-watering option of having a thin tube (catheter) inserted into a blood vessel in her groin and threaded up to her heart, where, through the catheter, a plug will be inserted into the duct rendering it closed. And home the next day.

See? Simple.

Let's hope so.

(Princess isn't so keen on going to hospital. But really it's amazing what a good bribe will do. She even announced to her friends today "I'm having my heart fixed, so instead of going boom swish boom swish, it will go boom boom boom boom properly!". Bless.)