Slowly but surely making progress.
Today we finally went to Moshi to retrieve Sule's records.
About time!
Funny thing about these silly Tanzanian hospitals, they don't save x-rays or echocardiograms. If any are kept, I swear it's by pure luck.
What we found out from their notes is that he has an atrial septal defect (ASD) with a left to right shunt. The hole is approximately 5mm wide and there's a possibility he also has stenosis of the pulmonary valve. If that meant nothing to you, you're not alone. I had to google it!
I stole this picture from Wikipedia (I'm not really up to speed with what is and isn't legal in the blogging world, so we'll just pretend it's fine). The red arrow is where his hole is. Basically it means oxygen-poor blood is able to flow directly from the right side of the heart and mix with oxygen-rich blood in the left side of the heart. This can lead to lower-than-normal oxygen levels and while ASD may not always produce symptoms, they have most certainly presented themselves in Baby Sule. I've scanned a copy of his records and am sending them out to The Small Things board. Hopefully this bit of information will be beneficial moving forward.
When we returned to Nkoaranga, we found out three children from the orphanage were also taken to the hospital this morning and two of them were admitted.
Stop this madness!
XOXO,
Amanda
0 comments :
Post a Comment