The Ross Family

Good Evening, Everyone!  We are praising the Lord for a great report from Grace's cardiac echo today.  At our last appointment, the gradient on Grace's mitral valve was 18, which was considered severe.  We are grateful to report that her gradient today had gone down to 14-15, which is now moderate-to-severe.  While these numbers are still not ideal, we are praising God for any type of improvement at this point.  Now, we are just waiting on the feedback from our cardiologist in Boston.  Our Texas cardiologist stated that there is a 50/50 chance that Grace's valve will just continue to be monitored and we will not need to do anything at this time.  The other option is that we will still need to go to Boston in order to relieve some of the pressure on the valve (again, this could be either a heart catheter or open heart surgery).  Even though her gradient is lower, part of the reason something might still need to be done to Grace's valve is due to the damage that can be done to her lungs with prolonged high pressure (high pressure across the mitral calve can put stress on the lungs, causing long term lung damage).  If we knew 100% that she would be a candidate for a full bi-ventricular repair, then the damage to the lungs wouldn't be as big of a concern.  However, in the event that she needed to be a single ventricle (her Boston Dr's have made this possibility seem less likely), it is imperative that they don't compromise any lung function because high pressures in the lungs make a single ventricle impossible (and then you add to that the fact that high lung pressure is very often associated with Up's anyway).  Grace's chest x-ray showed some mild fluid in the lungs, but it has remained the same over the past 3 weeks (which is a praise that there hasn't been any worsening).  Her oxygen levels were good and her Dr said she sounded "great" when listening to her heart and lungs.  In our opinion, the appointment today is most certainly praise worthy!  Thank you for your prayers and please keep the prayers coming because we are nowhere close to being out of the woods (although I'm pretty sure that the rest of our earthly lives will be spent in the woods :-).  Please pray that Grace continues to eat more and more (leading to some good weight gain) and that her mitral valve pressure continues to go down and that God would get ALL the glory.  We are thankful that we can trust God and know that His plan and will are perfect; therefore, we can be at peace with the uncertainty of the situation, since it is not uncertain to Him.

I keep feeling like it is inappropriate that I haven't even mentioned the tragedy that transpired in Boston on Monday... To be honest I can't even put my feelings into words right now.  All I can say is that we LOVE Boston, it has become SUCH a special city to our family over the past 3-4 months.  God has birthed a deep, deep love for the people of this great city, we will continue to do the most powerful thing that we know how, praying fervently for God's peace, comfort, and healing to wash over them.