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Mama's heart surgery

We had a meeting today with Dr Pearce at Surrey Memorial Hospital just to review the treatment and update us on alternatives. We watched a couple of videos regarding angiograms, baloon angioplasty, angioplasty with stenting, and antheorectomy. They may use all these procedures when performing open heart surgery on Mama. The other more experimental procedure is called Transcatheter but is reserved for patients who are otherwise not able to go through open heart surgery. They didn't have a video of this procedure since it is new (introduced in 2005). This procedure is supposed to be less invasive in that it does not require your ribs to be cracked open. Since Mama has been given the ok for open heart surgery, the doctors at Saint Paul's hospital will probably push for this instead of transcatheter.

Dr. Pearce showed us a copy of the angiogram results. I have it scanned but not sure if I should post it here. The results show that she has severe aortic stenosis and a graftable right coronary disease. Dr. Pearce thinks that she will go through an aortic valve replacement, some bypsses, and some angioplasty combination. Not sure though until she is admitted at Saint Paul's hospital and Dr. Webb et. al. reviews her charts.

Papa is flying back from the Philippines and will be here January 6th. Hopefully he is here before they start the major operation.

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