The results from Meredith's heart catheterization procedure confirmed our worst fears... her heart is extremely broken and beyond feasible long term repair. While most heart babies have one or congenital defects, Meredith has a combination of three extremely life threatening ones. She has the presence of MAPCAS (major aortopulmonary collateral arteries), PA/IVD (pulmonary atresia with intact ventricular septum), and the presence of only one coronary artery on her left side that is extremely small. All of those put together make an extremely complicated heart for our sweet girl.

We discussed two options with Meredith's doctors after the catheterization confirmation, one of them being to take Meredith home and allow her to pass away (this is not a simple path, it can be long and painful for the patient and while a family might get more time with them, it typically ends in a lot of suffering) and the other is to try to pursue an extremely risky surgical path for her that would increase her quality of life and maybe give her other surgical opportunities in the future should she survive. 

After much thinking and praying, Garrett and I felt led to attempt surgery for Meredith, believing that if she had a voice, she would want this chance at a life through surgery. 

Most surgeons would not be willing to take on her case due to it's complexity (and as far we are told, no surgeon has ever seen this exact heart presentation before) and we are beyond thankful that Dr. Tam (Meredith's cardiothoracic surgeon) is willing to attempt surgery for her! He will be preforming a unifocalization surgery, where he essentially takes all the different MAPCAs from the right side of her heart and attempts to construct one large functioning pulmonary artery. He then would take her left pulmonary artery which seems to be in better condition and place a shunt in order to help it to grow. He explained to us that the surgery, but even more importantly the first 72+ hours after surgery would be critical. When heart surgery is performed, it changes the pressures within the heart. With Meredith's heart physiology this becomes extremely dangerous, her coronary artery may not be able to hold up to such pressure change, leading to a massive cardiac episode/heart attack. So while there is a very real possibility that we will lose Meredith during or shortly after the surgery, we have hope that the Lord can allow a healing miracle in her life through the hands of Dr. Tam. 

These are all the words I have to write about this right now... Please pray for us as we are processing all of this information as family and grieving in different ways for what we hoped our time with sweet Meredith would look.