What a difference six months make

Today Evan had his big semiannual cardiology work up. The hospital where he gets his heart stuff done is a bit odd in that it is actually three different hospitals with the same name. They recently moved all the kid stuff (birthing and the NICU which were already in the one building and pediatric sub specialties plus the PICU and pediatric hospital rooms which were not) into one building. Now it is like a children's hospital with out being an official children's hospital. This was our first time at the new place and it was a bit strange at first but it was nice being in a shiny new examining room.

The biggest thing I noticed was that while driving there I did not have to go up the terror inducing hills that are very common in San Francisco. These are hills that you do not want to be driving a standard transmission on. These are hills that you break into a cold sweat if you see a person ahead of you on the hill because that means when they stop at the top of the hill for the four way stop you will be stuck behind them only partially up the hill, praying that you do not slide further down. These are hills that have sidewalk stairs for pedestrians. These are hills that make you thank Heavenly Father every time you successfully make it up them.

The appointment went so much better than I had expected. Previous to this Evan has been quite squirmy and very angry when he had to have his pace maker interrogated. All it involved was holding a large computer mouse like device over the spot where his pacemaker was. It did not even have to touch the skin, but having it hover near him just pissed him off worse than me holding him down and putting it against his shirt.

This time around he quietly accepted the pacemaker thing on his stomach with out a peep. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I was all tensed up for a fight to the finish with him. He was entranced with the screen of the computer and thought it was cool that he could see the squiggly lines of his heart beat. I told him that it was his heart beating and he kept asking to see more heart.

The even bigger surprise was to come. He had to have an echocardiogram and for the most part he stayed absolutely still. Again, in the past it had been a bit of a struggle to get him to be still and not cranky about the whole procedure. I had to bribe him with candy so they could get decent pictures with out having to resort to sedating him. I think I could have done this one with out the candy at all.

Everything is looking good with his heart. He charmed the heck out of everyone as usual, he loves his cardiologist since she has never actually given him a shot or done anything at all painful to him. Even the pacemaker guy was falling for him. We go back in another six months.