I find it a little ironic that Congenital Heart Defect Awareness day is on Valentines day. Who wants a "broken" heart on Valentines Day? March of Dimes is trying to avoid all these "broken" hearts. In this article published by M of D it describes what a congenital heart defect is, the major heart defects, how they are repaired, how it can affect the child, how to detect a heart defect, prevention of defects and much more information. Please take a few minute to read it. You never know when a "broken" heart will effect you or someone you love.
Sadie has 2 defects. The first defect is Atrial Septal Defect (a hole between the 2 upper chambers). She will hopefully get this fixed in the next year. The second is an interrupted inferior vena cava. It is rare (surprise, huh). Approximately 1 in 5000 babies are born with it. It is too hard and complicated to try to explain, but to sum it up in layman terms, the inferior vena cava (IVC) is the big vein that carries the blood from the lower extremities back to heart. Sadie's IVC is not complete, majority of it works, but not all. Her sweet, little body has figured out how to "reroute" her blood to make sure that it all gets back to her heart to become reoxygenated. Think of it like a bad accident on the highway. You have to get off of it and take a detour to get to where you want to go. You eventually get there, it just takes longer. Her blood does too, it gets back to the heart, it just takes longer. I'm not sure if this is a repairable defect or not. I'm going to guess not, but I really have no clue. Luckily, in Sadie's case it does not seem to bother her at all, so a repair has never even been brought up. Hopefully it stays that way.
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