Tuesday, January 10, 2006

A loong day


I am exhausted. Trips to the city always do that to me because they are never for fun, always for doctor stuff. My husband got the day off to come and help and ask his questions of the cardiologist. Nevermind that I have already told him the answer, he must ask someone else and get the same answer that he got from me in the first place. He was a help though and was useful for holding and hauling Harry around so I will forgive his annoyingness.

We started out by leaving early to visit some friends that we have in the city. I actually met the wife and baby son while Evan was in the hospital for his stroke. Her son was in for pH probe to test for reflux and an eating evaluation. We both were able to commiserate over the eating issues of our kids. Evan has progressed much better than her son I think partly because I am more willing to let him eat or not. She still feeds her son baby food and he is over a year old with a good mouth of teeth. I tried the whole baby food thing but because Evan was not into eating he would puke it up at me. Once I let him try his own finger food at his own pace he really started taking off. She is not as willing to let him try it himself but then she also has a more intense personality than me.

After a nice visit in which Evan showed off his mad eating skills to his friend we made our way to the hospital for the appointment with the cardiologist. Despite leaving 20 min early and only having to go a few blocks to get to the hospital from my friend's house we got there right at the appointment time. Parking and one way streets threw a wrench in my well timed plans.

Evan freaked out while being weighed (25 and a half pounds!!!) for some odd reason. He always hates being placed on a scale. His sats were in the low 80s which is ok but not great. The pacemaker interrogation went fine. The guy that did it was obviously not used to working at the hospital because he asked if we had had the pacemaker surgery at another near by hospital. I was like umm why since they have a perfectly good pediactric heart surgeon here. Evan was kind enough to show off his walking ability for the cardiologist and her nurse practicioner who were both very impressed. I really like that the doctor is not distant with her patients like many can be. She is always very willing to pick up Evan and interact with him. She never minds when he acts like a toddler which often means that she might not get to listen to his heart as much as he would like because he wants to see the sethescope.

The echo was the thing I was really worried about going well. Evan can be very squirmy and hates to be restrained in any way if it stops him from getting something he wants. I brought some Baby Einstein which he is addicted to and chocolate which he is also a huge fan of. Both of those along with a light thingy
kept him suitably entertained long enough for them to get the images they needed.

His surgery is going to be in the spring sometime after his birthday. The cardiologist then dropped a bit of a bomb on us by saying that they would probably be doing the fontan in the fall after he had some recovery time from this upcoming surgery. This is because he is growing so well. I am happy at the thought that his major surgeries would be over before the end of the year. It also makes me even more glad that Harry is on formula since I will be spending so much time in the hospital with Evan this year. Of course there is pacemaker maintanace and other things that could be thrown at us so I will never think that he is totally done with surgery but this is a nice step.

Harry decided to be a stinker this evening. He puked up his late evening bottle and after the bath and other fun decided that he was not going to sleep unless it was in my arms. I was just too tired after the busy day to deal with that so I let him fuss a bit after jumping through all the usual hoops to get him to sleep. He settled down without too much crying thank goodness (I would have caved if it had gone on much longer).

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