I'm writing this update from home. This is the standard procedure under normal circumstances, but for a day that had us heading to the hospital at 6:30 am for Lyra's third cardiac catheterization, it's a little strange to be home already.
These caths are considered "routine", but that's used in a very literal sense. Because they do a lot of these things, they are routine to the doctors and nurses, however, they're also like a mini-surgery, with all the various and sundry accoutrements. So for patients, they're not routine in the same sense as getting blood drawn or having an x-ray taken.
Anyway... Lyra did very well on this cath. They saw the things they were hoping to see and got the data they wanted to get. Now we'll wait until the data is reviewed by the surgical team and they'll let us know what the next step will be. It looks like her second stage, the Glenn, is within sight. There was some concern that Lyra has too much blood flow to her lungs, making her heart work harder than it should, and because of that there is an alternative that the doctors may consider, which is the use of some form of medication that would alleviate some of the high flow to the lungs and give Lyra some more time to grow. From what we heard today, that alternative seems unlikely, but it's still out there.
In addition to Lyra's good work on the cath, she also recovered from it very nicely, which is of course the reason I'm home writing this. Yes, for the first time we went to the hospital and returned on the same day. This hasn't happened since... I'm not sure it's ever happened.