This Winter

This Winter

Sydney

This winter so far has been great not much snow but it's great. Went snowboarding today, but Daddy re-hurt his back, so that kinda sucked for him.  Might got tomorrow at Burke, but then it is Christmas time!!!

I have company from my pets Sydney( dog 13 yrs Great Pyrenees Anatolian Shepherd Mix Girl) Henry( Dog, Almost 2 yrs,Saint Bernard, Boy) Cloudy (Cat, 3 yrs, Boy) Tiger ( Cat, 3 yrs, Boy).

-Sarah

Cloudy

Henry

Tiger

Sarah's Story

Sarah was born with a congenital heart condition called Aortic Stenosis.  This is a malformation of her aortic valve which causes inefficiencies and leakage of the valve into the left ventricle (LV).  This did not impose any symptomatic health issues in her early years, but we would be expected to have a valve replacement surgery sometime in her later years of life.

Sarah is our oldest daughter, of three, and is 10 years old, will be 11 in April.  She is a warm-hearted, giving, kind, happy, energetic, talented, smart - all the things a dad has to say, but are so true - girl.  She really enjoys both summer and winter, as you need to embrace the seasons living in northeastern Vermont - especially snowboarding, swimming, skating, gymnastics and mountain biking.  She is asymptomatic, with great heart function, and feels great!

In early November we wanted to get a second opinion on her heart condition so we reached out to Dr. Peter Lang with Boston Children's Hospital.  Previously we were having her routine echo-cardiograms (echos) with Dartmouth - which has been great, but there were concerns that she should begin to limit her activity, and they upped her medications.  It was time for a second opinion.

A family friend of my little brother, Dr. Todd Roth, is a budding pediatric cardiologist, and he was kind enough to give us some advice and direction for this venture.  He agreed Boston was probably one of the best groups to be aligned with going into a potential OHS.  So we took a trip to Boston to get an EKG, Stress Test and MRI.  The MRI was the focus of the trip to get a very high-resolution view of her valve geometry and the condition of the LV.  After a few glimpses of the real-time MRI images, Dr. Lang, knew that it was time to start thinking about getting her valve repaired or replaced very soon.  This was a bit of a shock to us all, but we understand the need and the importance to get this corrected.  This is not urgent, but the feeling we got was within 6 months or so.

This is Sarah praying our new motor boat
will start (from this summer), also praying for
 snow and other good things to come!

Since then, we have had many talks with Dr. Lang and others at Boston Children's and have tentatively scheduled her valve repair (not replacement) for mid-March.  Just yesterday we spoke with the surgeon, Dr. Sitaram Emani, who we are very fortunate to be in the hands of.  He is an impressive surgeon, was very easy to talk to and answered all of our questions.  We are feeling very good about having him as our team captain!!

For now, we plan to enjoy the holiday season and try to forget about lifes' challenges for a little while.  We just started skiing and snowboarding last weekend, which was great, but we really could use some more snow (pray)!  We will be home in VT for Christmas, which will be nice and relaxing.  We wish everyone a very happy and safe holiday season and check in as we make updates in the future.