My Baby Girl’s Story
I don’t know how to start this off. All I know for sure is that we need help.
She was born on the 31st of October 2008 in Bucharest. She was 3.3 kilos (7.3 lbs), Apgar score 9.
I remember how I experienced that 31st of October, the moments before her birth up to the minute they brought her to me and I held her in my arms for the first time. I was so incredibly happy.
Until that same evening, when problems came up. The doctors did a medical check on her and diagnosed her with:
- complete common atrioventricular canal, Rastelli’s type A;
- persistent arterial canal;
- severe lung hypertension.
I have to say there were no problems during the pregnancy. We did all the medical tests on time; they could find nothing wrong with our baby’s heart.
After the post-birth diagnosis, she was catheterized at the Central Military Hospital. Then we were scheduled for hospitalization and surgery in Târgu Mureş. She had her heart operation done there. And then after-surgery complications appeared. Because of that we spent three months in various hospitals. We got back home last night.
This is what happened: three days after she’d been admitted to hospital she got an enteroviral infection. Another three days later, rhinopharyngitis. They catheterized her to assess her pulmonary resistance. Following the catheterization she got pneumonia. It was only after one month in hospital that Dr. H. Suciu was able to perform surgery on her. He told us afterwards that out of the 120 cases of complete common atrioventricular canal Rastelli’s type A that he had operated, our daughter’s was the most severe.
The surgery was 70-80% successful. However, due to severe pulmonary hypertension, a series of extubations and intubations followed. The intubation lasted two weeks. Then they had to perform tracheostomy on my daughter. So we stayed on for two more weeks, until they transferred us to the Marie Curie Hospital (Budimex) in Bucharest. That’s where we spent another two weeks. She had endoscopy done and that’s when we finally found out the diagnosis: it’s postintubation grade IV glotto-subglottic stenosis.
She needs two other surgical interventions. Their success depends mainly on the doctor’s surgical abilities. This type of surgery isn’t available in Romania, but only in Lausanne, Switzerland. It must cost a fortune(60000 euro).
I’m typing these lines and my hands are shaking. It’s been very tough so far. I’ve no idea how tough it’s going to be from now on. Sometimes I just don’t know what else I can do, how to do it, how to think about it.
I just know this one thing: I love my baby girl and I want this larynx problem solved. Because of the cannula she can’t make any sound. At times she can barely breathe, and that’s risky. For the moment we’re aspirating her ourselves. It’s really hard and…
This is our email: blue10lion@yahoo.com
We’ve opened these accounts:
Account Holder : Orbulescu Ioan-Sabin
Romanian currency (RON) account: RO03 INGB 0000 9999 0157 7010
Euro account: RO24 INGB 0000 9999 0157 7020
Swift Code: INGBROBU
ING Bank, Bucharest branch
