Today the doctors explained that they don't feel comfortable performing heart surgery on Jereth right now because they don't see the expected indicators that he is in heart failure. His poor growth and difficulty breathing are a problem, but they don't feel that the VSD (hole in his heart) is the primary cause of either problem.
At this time they believe there is a problem in his lungs that combined with the malacia (weak airway walls) is causing his breathing problem. To perform surgery on his heart right now could damage his lungs further due to the bypass machine that is used to take over the heart/lung function during the surgery. So I met with a pulmonologist (lung doctor) today.
After discussing Jereth's health history and examining Jereth and the x-ray taken yesterday, the doctor wanted to look at the x-rays taken at St. Luke's. The typical way radiology records with pictures are sent involves the sending hospital putting the records on a CD. The CD is then mailed to the receiving hospital which can be read using special software. Since the radiology department at St. Luke's was not answering the phone, this process could not start until Monday, so we'd be lucky to get the CD by Tuesday, with Wednesday being more likely.
Our nurse, Beau, suggested that if Roy were to go by the hospital today he could request the records personally and bring them with him on Monday, saving us at least one day of hanging around in PICU just waiting for records. I suggested Roy upload the files on the CD to a secure location on my website then I could download them here and the radiologist could read them today and the pulmonologist could view them tomorrow and make his decision that much sooner.
The hospital has tried getting the records off a USB drive before and the program can only accept records on CD. However they were willing to try and see what could be done, so Roy called St. Luke's and they saved the records of the x-rays, including the entire picture to a CD.
Roy picked up the CD, headed home, and between Roy, Spencer, and me we were able to get the files saved to the website and them I got them uploaded to my USB drive. I went back to the radiology department with the files, but they could not read my USB drive with that program.
We tried burning a CD of the zipped folder with all of the files from the original CD, but the program could not read that files. Instead of giving up I asked for a new CD and tried saving only the files from the original CD. It worked. The radiologist happened to be in the room and he verified that the files were what he would need to read the x-rays. This should save us at least 2 days in limbo. The pulmonologist should be able to make his decision that mch sooner because he will have the 3 earlier x-rays and can compare the lungs in those to the lungs in yesterday's x-ray.
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