Ashley's Health Explained Revision #1

Oh wow! Love the blue! Cool! Ok, so I totally messed up explaining some things about Ashley's heart. It is so complicated, it is easy to do. So I decided to list, from her medical records, all the defects that were present at birth. I am currently studying about the heart, to better understand what normal is. I hope that will help me to understand just how messed up Ashley's heart was, and still is now.

Situs Inversus (meaning stomach and liver are on the opposite sides.)

Pulmonary venus drainage to the right-sided morphologic left atrium.

Systemic venous drainage to a left-sided morphologic right atrium.

Interrupted inferior vena cava with hemiazygous continuation to the left superior vena cava

Absent right superior vena cava

Hepatic venous drainage to an interrupted inferior vena cava with some hepatic venous drainage to the systemic, left-sided venous atrium.

Large ventricular septal defect

Hypoplastic right ventricle with small tricuspid valve.

Subaortic stenosis

L-malposition of the great arteries

Right aortic arch

Coarctation of the aorta

Okay that was a lot of medical gibberish. At one time, I was asked to come into a nursing class with Ashley and explain to the class all her defects. I will explain them correctly at another time. But as you can see, she had lots of things wrong with her heart. And of course, the initial problem they found before finding all these defects, was that her esophagus wasn't attached to her stomach. The fact that she is currently 12 years old, and has continued to live for so many years, is truly a miracle.